... the singularity advanced by Walde's work suggests something hopeful. It invites us to rethink and re-imagine the ways in which we recognise, perceive and approach art, and at times, reality.
I consider that we are participating in an optimistic
time of re-destinations rather than deconstructions,
where new horizons for art and communication are
appearing. It is a celebration of otherness and a surrendering
of the autocracy of high Modernist authority
to a more democratic model. Attraction and repulsion,
longing and denial, seduction and rejection
are all part of the relationship of the individual with
regard to various forms of authority-based thinking
(State, institutional, social and cultural). Walde's
work ephemerally traces the shifting away from autocratic
paradigms of thinking (including globalisation)
and from instituted forms of control to a celebration
of otherness with its desire for openness, change and
individual cultural difference. His work questions the
changes happening on the social, historical level, and
patriarchal models of behaviour based on the institution
of authority versus the emerging, more flexible
values that invite dialogue. In the process, the artwork
and artist risk the nocturnal, the unknown, the love
and the wounding that might go along with such experimentation
that gently traces the sway between
silence and the voice.The last two decades have demonstrated an incredible
international desire for cultural self-determination.
Two opposing global tendencies have been demonstrated
in this time: capital-driven globalisation led
by major international mega-corporations, and the
claim of smaller interests struggling for their individual
voice. Walde's work determinedly supports the
underdog position that aims for singularities, and a
diversity of experiences and voices that Deleuze and
Guattari termed "a rhizomatics of communication".
In the end it is a question of ethics and how art addresses
this issue. If we do not pay enough attention,
if we lose the opportunity of being open-minded we
will only regret our neglect of the infinitesimally delicate
web of everyday life. As the saying goes, "God
is in the details" – the ephemeral, subtle, unpredictable,
and always fragile weaves of our lives.
