People sit or recline along the back wall of the Kunsthalle, argue, read, watch the passers-by or hastily swallow the last mouthful of the lunches they have brought with them. What is being enacted here? The woman who sits by the wall observes the man who walks past, who in turn surveys the people on the bench. ls this a play? Who is the audience and who are the extras? Both questions remain open. The roles alternate, turning the situation into an encounter between viewers and performers. Esther Hiepler’s intervention in the architectural form and colour scheme of the back wall predefines a stage set, into which the dramatis personae then make their entrances. The autonomaus actors are controlled by an invisible director. The ambiguity is complete.
Hiepler’s interventions locate the viewer on an imaginary (or is it real?) stage. Whatever medium she employs- performance, video or installation – her pieces always base themselves on stage action. The stage is the plattarm and the space of her artistic expression. She uses approaches that derive from highly disparate realms of ideas. Often she introduces a gestural rhythm or an acoustic device. Her choreography builds on a reductionist use of movement and decor. lt might almost be described as ascetic stage-design. Hiepler dispenses with elaborate staffage in order to concentrate the action. On optical and acoustic Ieveis, the work takes over and monopolizes the viewer’s sensory perceptions. Hiepler’s use of the language of artistic form is always precisely worked out. Thus, in her performance Auftritt für zwei Schlagzeuge (Scene for Two Percussions), she encases the heads and feet of the two female performers in coloured blocks of different sizes; there are blocks on all their fingers too. The only decor consists of tables and chairs in rigorous cubic forms, and the performers use their own cubed extremities to create the percussion effects. This live performance, which has been shown on a number of stages, generates new motifs of motion and suggests living, sculptural images.
The video piece made for the 1997 annual exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel uses similar artistic devices. Coloured geometric forms are rhythmically pushed back and forward; at the same time, they can be viewed from different angles on four monitor screens assembled into a cube. The result is a visual experience of constant change.
ln the video performanceBilderbühne (Picture Stage), the action once more turns the space of the work into a stage of the imagination. Movement flows with lightness and grace, to the rhythm of an “easy listening” music track. Sheets or rolls of coloured paper are spread out to create living images with a strong inherent dynamic. These are compositions in a constant state of flux. There is no haste and no unrest; the impression is one of universal concord and harmony. Hiepler is less concerned to make a finished end product than to create new forms. Rhythm is part and parcel of her metaphorical language. lt is generated through a sequence of movements, both those of the human body and those aided by geometrical forms; and these alternately define the contents of the imagery.
Images in a constant process of regeneration belang to the repertoire of Hiepler’s work. She uses them to explore the possibilities of form, colour and composition. The evanescent element in her work – that is, everything that she does not explicitly formulate but leaves open–ended – gives the viewer space for his or her own reading of an ongoing dramatic process.
Text from catalog 31/1999 Esther Hiepler, Kunsthalle Basel, Verlag Schwabe & Co, Basel