The range of materials used by Martin Walde
is as wide as it is unusual, and includes not just
polystyrene, silicon, latex, acrylic, carbon,
gel and plasma but also flour, stearin and
fragrances. What these substances have in
common is that none of these materials has
been traditionally used in fine art. Indeed,
they are characterised by their malleability,
instability, flexibility and changeability– properties which were undesirable as long as
works of art were intended to be permanent
and unchanging.
The idea of employing any conceivable
material in art was first propagated by theFuturists in the early twentieth century. In the 1920s and 1930s, experimentation began with the waste produced by industrial society and new plastics, such as the malleable,
transparent Plexiglas. (1) In the 1960s, they were augmented by the extensive use of ephemeral and amorphous substances. Artists like Joseph Beuys and Dieter Roth as well as Robert Smithson and Robert Morris, the analyst of anti-form in the USA, along with the advocates of the Italian Arte Povera movement made a lasting contribution to expanding the range of material used in fine art. Beuys developed his ›plastic theory‹ largely on the basis of artworks using flexible, everyday materials such as grease, honey and oil, and also recast objects made out of traditionally valuable materials with high symbolic value such as acopy of Ivan the Terrible’s golden crown into a ›rabbit of peace‹. Many works produced in
the 1960s dwelt on the material’s remodelling potential. (2) Yet unlike the synthetic industrial substances preferred by Walde, the materials favoured at that time were already imbued with sentimental value owing to their individual, everyday uses.
Martin Walde belongs to a different generation
of artists from Beuys, Smithson and
the representatives of Arte Povera. Although
many of the materials employed by Walde
could well be related to Beuys’ plastic theory,
they refer to an altered context. Most of them
are less specifically coded than those from
the era of the ›poor materials‹ simply because
silicone, carbon, polystyrene and gel belong
to groups of materials whose manufacture and
specific properties are frequently unknown to
the layman. Walde’s experimental arrangementsusually require not just an beholder but a co-acting visitor, the eye being supplemented by the hand and the body. The whip-like silicone elements for example do not reveal their wealth of winding forms until moved manually To carry Around while the astonishing three-dimensional web of carbon rods (Tales of P.P.) only takes shape when visitors start inserting the flexible rods into the irregular, hand-moulded silicone joints. This tactile handling of the material communicates empirical knowledge about the behaviour of the
Cf : Andrea El-Danasouri : Kunststoff
und Müll. Das Material bei Naum Gabo
und Kurt Schwitters, Munich, 1992.Cf : Monika Wagner : Das Material der
Kunst – eine andere Geschichte der
Moderne, Munich, 2001, especially
pp 197 – 222.
