Martin Walde
November 19, 2005 to January 15, 2006

In connection with the opening of the Martin Walde exhibition the
Innsbrucker Premierentage, 6 p.m. will be opened.
Opening Dr. Elisabeth Zanon, head of the Tyrolean government’s office for cultural affairs
Hilde Zach, mayor of Innsbruck

Martin Walde, 6:30 p.m.
Exhibition will be opened by Dr. Elisabeth Zanon
Introduction to the exhibition by Dr. Annelie Pohlen, art historian and critic, Bonn

Martin Walde, an artist who adopts an all-round approach to the media, is interested in triggering processes regarding both material and form as well as our action, our experiences and our thinking. Walde is after a phenomenology of change, which he seeks out in very everday situations, e.g., in the public space of a city. He also stages change within the structural givens of the artwork itself the material of which can then be transformed chemically or physically like in an experiment. This also happens when he integrates people in the artwork as well in a variety of different ways, letting them become an interactive part of the artistic scenario – sometimes also by offering instructions for action.

In two rooms of the Galerie im Taxispalais, Walde will present an overview of his photographic work. There will be a series featuring images of states resulting from interventions, a transformation of the normal. To quote Walde, they depict “phenomena which were briefly taken away from our world and returned in a changed form, as, for instance, a watery foam that was stabilized.”

A further series, the "Enactments", are photographs the artist has taken in urban zones, e.g., inside of a subway, the platform of a station or a street. In these pictures, Walde adds the drawing of a scene that he experienced here live – someone committing suicide on the edge of a platform or a woman lying on the pavement. These drawings are added after the act but as a testimonial they trigger a real often frightful situation.

For the other rooms of the Galerie Martin Walde developed space-filling “complexes” that are neither sculpture, object nor installation. They can be described as a “performative (inter)action” which allows the visitor to be a part of the development and transformation of the piece. The hall on the basement floor will be used as a production forum for "NOFF #4 (Nature’s Own Flexible Facsimile)". Under the supervision of a specially trained person, the public can use the available instruments and material to create an artwork, a constantly growing “sculpture” consisting of malleable plastic.

In a different room, in the middle of which stands a huge table, Walde offers a "Teaset" in an exchange for something – both on location at the exhibition and by means of the Internet, via his e-mail address. He wants to get rid of the teaset but the conditions for the exchange – by no means involving money – are as the artist himself admits “not so easy” so he just waits for the right offer.

Apart from two additional space-specific installation pieces, one with video, Walde has put together a performance for the opening evening with the title "The Thin Red Line". A young woman carries a ball of wool, which she continues to wind. While doing this she asks passers-by in a quiet, monotonous voice for a small item, personal things that she integrates into the ball of wool. An innocuous act becomes a challenge in which private and public aspects intermingle, in which obsession and ritual suddenly break into the normative social contact and the form of interactivity also literally gives way to new “entanglements” or networks.

Martin Walde was born in Innsbruck in 1957; he lives and works in Vienna.