Martin Walde | Leaving something open to evolution...


		Leaving something open to evolution... \| Jens Asthoff

		...continued from page 2

terms:		Form is never static in Walde's work but instead is questioned, tested, and presented as a threshold phenomenon while incorporating highly varied concrete (institutional, imaginary and emotional) constraints. "We are far too fixed on seeing works as a closed identity, accepting them as a formally unified style" (4), he says, and on his part he keeps the boundaries open. Although his works do not appear to be subject to a formal canon of regulations, they are realized in extremely diverse forms, and are almost impossible to be described uniformly in terms of stylistic categories, they are generally unified in functioning not simply as mere objects to be looked at, but as transformers. Above all they are a point of origin for realms of the imagination and of action, semantically intermediary zones that Walde explicitly provides with intrinsic blurriness as a formal component. "I am interested in the possibility of leaving something open to evolution, which means I am capable at any time to having myself seduced by a possibility arising from someone else responding to my work; in a form that means I learn to understand and look at something differently again. To that extent I actually see mvself as a participant, rather than someone staging and controlling things." (5)
Wormcomplex	p.1, 2, 5
Tie or Untie	p.2, 5–7
The Key Spirit	p.2
Woobies	p.2
NOFF#1#2#3#4	p. 2, 6, 7
Handmates	p.4, 7
Jelly Soap	p.4
Clips of Slips	p.4, 6
Der Regen hat eine angenehme Temperatur
Der Regen hat eine angenehme Temperatur	p.4
Woobie #2	p.5
NOFF #4	p.5, 6–8
Enactments	p.6
Loosing Control	p.6
The Thin Red Line	p.6, 8	With this in mind, Walde's works ultimately have a character of performance, and the objects are somewhat like "tools" which one must use in order to have an experience, or more precisely: an invariably individual experience that is not the same for everyone. For Walde, even photos or films are primarily tools for the imaginative. In his work, this type of use is not solely "conceptual" as is the case in the idea "beyond the pedestal" developed in sculptural conceptions by Franz West or, in a different way, by Franz Erhard Walther. Walde leaves open possible interaction with his works in a completely different and more versatile manner that is always redefined for individual works, and is never simply formal. The works in fact assimilate the use and action-oriented aspect as a concrete stimulus due to its unpredictability, and by assimilating and thus significantly changing and elaborating upon it they bring to light something that could not have been planned or produced in any other way. The works are inventions that only take form through communication. Walde also describes this kind of openess as performative interaction between viewer and work. The works initiate a certain formal and definitely open "conversation" with their audience, bypassing the ingrained habits of the merely passive art viewer in an original and often very subtle manner. In formalizations such as these Walde intensifies the works and simultaneously reduces them to "latent possibilities of the thing itself", and "charges them with optionality"'(6) that must then be redeemed, or realized, by their viewers/users.(>>>)
Can you give me something?	p.6
The Tea Set	p.8



			(4)Martin Walde, Open Horders, Interview, in: Martin Walde [cat.], op.cit. pp. 76-79, p. 78. (5)Interview, op.cit. p. 76. (6)Martin Walde in an e-mail to the author, September 2005.









authors:
Jens Asthoff