FICTION

26 Janu­ary 2013 – 2 March 2013
Bol­te­Lang, Zurich

Colour and the per­cep­ti­on the­reof is a uni­que expe­ri­ence for all of us. When a child is taught what colour the grass is, or the sun, it is given the key to a mutu­al under­stan­ding, which makes up our social para­digm. By sti­mu­la­ting the sen­ses and allo­wing them to com­mu­ni­ca­te in a har­mo­nious and equal man­ner, we can begin to build a basis for expres­sing what seems so obvious, but remains utter­ly vague. At an ear­ly age, we blind­ly agree with what we are told, but then spend adult­hood dis­co­ve­ring our own truths. We are obli­ged to accept some, or find out that others may distort when view­ed from a dif­fe­rent ang­le, but colour is a sub­ject one never seems to doubt. It is exact­ly this dis­crepan­cy, bet­ween what we take for gran­ted and what we actual­ly see (that is: what might as well be true), that fasci­na­tes Dag­mar Hepp­ner and leads her to explo­re the pos­si­bi­li­ties for expe­ri­en­cing and under­stan­ding the social con­s­truct that may be lin­ked to it. What one per­son’ s mind may per­cei­ve as true, can be a fal­si­ty to the other.

For her first solo exhi­bi­ti­on at Bol­te­Lang, Dag­mar Hepp­ner explo­res the­se per­so­nal truths. She invi­tes us to fol­low a site-spe­ci­fic trail of fabric, let­ting the view­er inter­act with an assem­bla­ge of hand-dyed fabrics, sewn tog­e­ther using tech­ni­ques other­wi­se appli­ed for garm­ents and inte­ri­or design/textile deco­ra­ti­on – fol­dings remind of skirts and dres­ses, or the shir­ring of curta­ins. Blen­ding seve­ral colours, Hepp­ner crea­tes 12 hues of a dif­fe­rent kind, rela­ted to the colour cir­cle that Ger­trud Gru­now used for her les­sons in “Har­mo­ni­sie­rungs­leh­re” at the Bau­haus in Wei­mar. The cir­cle is appli­ed to the archi­tec­tu­re of the gal­lery as the colou­red fabric twi­nes around a built-in u‑shaped wall, crawls through the office, the cor­ri­dor and the adja­cent win­dow and can never be per­cei­ved in its enti­re­ty. The soft­ness of the tex­ti­le path crea­tes gent­le dis­tur­ban­ces in the space, the way it enve­lo­ps the stark white cube, and almost mimics a sta­ve for the notes of colour to dis­play their song.

Grunow’s theo­ry is a com­plex mesh of con­vic­tions, beliefs and rela­ti­ons likely to col­lap­se when serious­ly ques­tio­ned and doub­ted. It is a very per­so­nal con­s­truct to under­stand and deal with the world and its oddi­ties. For Hepp­ner, as oppo­sed to Gru­now, it is the subt­le lack of harm­o­ny that allows for the view­er to ’enter‘ a work as this is whe­re the pic­tu­re crum­bles. Being more inte­res­ted in the moments when things do not quite come tog­e­ther or lose their func­tion the artist employs useful stit­ches to unfa­mi­li­ar colours to clo­the a wall, or turns sewing pat­terns into monsters.

For Fic­tion, tex­ti­le is not mere­ly a means to an end, but rather a medi­um that offers Hepp­ner end­less pos­si­bi­li­ties. From the Latin word ’texe­re‘, ’to con­s­truct‘, fabric stands not only at the core of the site-spe­ci­fic work, but is also the basis for the fasci­na­ting dicho­to­my that the use of fabric pres­ents us with – the con­stric­tions clot­hing can lay upon us as oppo­sed to the liber­ty one has when working with it. Her inher­ent con­nec­tion with cloth is mere­ly hin­ted at in the two other works in the exhi­bi­ti­on, which show adapt­ed sewing pat­terns for a dress and a ruff­le blou­se. The artist keeps what should be con­ver­ted into the mul­ti-dimen­sio­nal world on a flat sur­face and blurs its infor­ma­ti­on by rear­ran­ging and over­lay­ing the forms. The once clear gui­de­lines for a pie­ce of clot­hing – some­thing indi­vi­du­al and per­so­nal – trans­form into a geo­me­tri­cal, archi­tec­tu­ral design resembling masks or a crea­tu­re, and ther­eby crea­ting a cer­tain unea­se. The blur­ring of the boun­da­ries of what we should see and what we do see, is uncan­ny and unsett­ling, but allows us to once again ques­ti­on our per­so­nal truths.

The limi­ta­ti­ons of our per­cep­ti­on often hin­der us from see­ing the big­ger pic­tu­re, but they also allow every indi­vi­du­al to have a uni­que expe­ri­ence. Dag­mar Hepp­ner invi­tes us to heigh­ten our sen­ses, to face the unea­se and begin to see the beau­ty in the dis­harm­o­ny of both medi­um and the pre­sen­ta­ti­on thereof.

The musi­ci­an Ger­trud Gru­now (∗1870 in Ber­lin, †1944 in Lever­ku­sen) was invi­ted by the Bau­haus mas­ter Johan­nes Itten to teach her cour­se on the Theo­ry of Harm­o­ny at the Staat­li­ches Bau­haus in Wei­mar from 1919 to 1923. Her theo­ry had an holi­stic approach and lin­ked the means of expres­si­on to the indi­vi­du­al per­cep­ti­on of colours, sounds and forms. Exer­ci­s­es aimed to shar­pen the stu­dents’ sen­ses and to crea­te an inner and outer balan­ce, which was unders­tood as pre­con­di­ti­on for the cea­ti­ve pro­cess. A cir­cle con­sis­ting of 12 colours rela­ted to 12 geo­me­tri­cal forms, 12 musi­cal tones and 12 move­ments was a fun­da­men­tal tool in her lessons.

Caro­li­ne Lommaert