Burning curiosity

The darkness dispels to reveal a figure cowering from the searing red light which is triggered as an observer enters the apparent emptiness of Martin Walde’s space in Aspinwall House. One can feel its distress worsening the longer they remain. It is mirrored in one’s own discomfort.

The room has been slowly growing warmer and the light has begun to pulse. Only after the spectator leaves and the room goes dark again does it strike ‘your curiosity caused its pain’. The wax sculpture, titled ‘Multiple Choice’, is thus a kind of social experiment.

“The longer and the more frequent visitors come and stay the more this figure, which is made of wax, is in distress. The softening of the material could lead to the deformation of the figure. Our presence directly threatens its materiality of the figure. But it is an accumulating process that arises from the collective and therefore difficult to notice,” Walde said.

The Austrian artist’s practice involves creating precise conditions of an artwork or installation and then giving the audience freedom to help create an intended meaning. Visitors are not passive observers. For Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016, he has created two works that force audiences to participate in the meaning-making experience.

Walde, seemingly, puts it to visitors to decide if the wax figure dissolves into the ground or disappears into the dark. Tellingly, there is no saving it - mimicking the lack of power in real-life forced detentions. A friend’s harrowing experience with interrogation inspired the work.

“We move into the room, and suddenly we see a seated figure raising his hands in a defensive gesture against the bright red light of an infrared lamp. We never see this figure in daylight. A motion detector activates the heat lamp. If a person is in the room, the lamp shines. It is not the aim to dramatically deform and melt this figure, but to prevent this process,” Walde said.

Like the process, the material is unforgiving. “I carved the figure out of a special translucent wax that weighed 460 kg. The figure is therefore not a reproducible cast. I worked for 4 weeks at the figure. It was particularly important for me to work with a material that does not allow carelessness.

This tension and concentration is trapped in the gesture of the figure,” he added.