"Croak"

Opening: 29 January, 7.30pm The extensive work by Martin Walde branches out into many disciplines – from drawings, videos, sculptures through to installations. The Austrian artist became known to a larger public at the latest following his participation in documenta X (1997). At Marta Herford he will present his largest German solo exhibition to date. Martin Walde is a discoverer and inventor of forms. With a decidedly alchemistic interest in scientific connections he succeeds in lending a new fascination to everyday materials. The Museum is transformed into a workshop or experimental laboratory in which the various materials can be playfully tested by visitors. Interestingly, Walde often consciously avoids determining the outcome of the interaction and in doing so addresses his own role as artist: “I am interested in leaving open-ended something that is evolutionary (…) having a different take on something, looking at it differently. In this sense, I see myself increasingly as a participant, not as someone who brings something controlled to the stage“ (Martin Walde). By opening up new fields of experience and spaces for reflection the exhibition questions the customary relationship between observer and work. It invites visitors contrary to the normal museum conventions to touch works, to mess them up or put them in order. Simultaneously, visitors are encouraged to question their own responsibility and explore it sensitively in dealing with the work of art. However, the expansive installations also strongly involve visitors acoustically: With gurgling, hissing and wavering sounds videos anticipate in film form what can be directly experienced elsewhere. In addition to the major, experience-based works visitors are startled by works in remote parts of the museum. They play with the unexpected and the incalculable, but also with what goes unnoticed or is declared unimportant. At the same time his drawings and animations develop a narrative access to the everyday by capturing moving moments between banality and craziness, triviality and sensation, ritual and carelessness. A bi-lingual catalog (German / English) will be published by Hatje Cantz Verlag in cooperation with the ZKM, Karlsruhe and Neue Galerie Graz. The exhibition has been kindly funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture in Vienna and the Austrian Cultural Forum in Berlin.