A gesture, a step, many steps. An ordinary day in motion. What reveals itself when we linger? How do we move through the everyday, and what occurs in each moment as we make our way through the day? It’s impossible to know – and yet, when we pause, a potential always emerges: a multitude of small possible events, surprises that often go unnoticed.

Walking with two burning candles balanced on the tips of one’s shoes is, of course, not an everyday experience, but rather a form of focused attention: the careful placing of the foot to avoid spilling wax, the cautious forward movement to keep the flames alive – all this steers the mind elsewhere and makes the usually unconscious act of walking visible. That hopping and jumping might then inscribe themselves into fragile lines of ceramic is surprising in how it becomes material.

Bignia Wehrli’s projects are rooted in everyday experience: sunlight, raindrops, footsteps, sounds, and the perceptions, intuitions, sudden insights they evoke – experimental setups, one might say, that explore the nature of the everyday. These are concepts that slowly, even retrospectively, approach phenomena such as sunlight and, through instruments constructed by the artist, are recorded, examined, and made newly experienceable. Precisely through the guided process and the experience-based framework, the artist – almost unexpectedly – creates space for the unknown.

But what happens when she turns her attention as much to cracks in the asphalt – pure chance – as to the act of capturing sunrays, to which we ascribe a scientifically grounded ‘behaviour’?

My thoughts try to connect these two approaches, moving back and forth, circling a small empty space, fluttering a little, and eventually surrounding themselves with a sense of intuitive understanding. I enjoy reflecting on the titles too – they sound so definitive, as if describing established categories. But what, for example, distinguishes the Sonnentrichter (Solar Funnel) from the Sonnenschwarm (Sun Swarm)?

By coincidence, I began reading Friedrich Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795) in recent weeks. In the 15th letter, he writes: “Man is only fully human when he plays.” Schiller’s characterisation of play – the setting of rules and their adaptation as the play progresses – reminds me of Bignia Wehrli’s work. Yes, the concepts and rules are clear and comprehensible – but they remain fluid. When I view the world through her instrument Blickscherung (Shearing Scope), humour comes into play for me. Or the seriousness of it – the traces of time, of a day’s movements, the phenomenon of hopping and jumping that we come closer to understanding, only to let them go again. Her Lichtfänger (Light Catcher) makes these many overlays especially visible: two pinhole cameras mounted on long rods, extended into the sky, respond to the wind and the slightest movement of the hands. They become an iconic and archaic image – as if I might actually collect light as a substance. A beautiful mission, a poetic performance where rules and emotion exchange places.

I clearly recall the conversation in which Bignia Wehrli explained her work TRIKLANG (2012) to me. On the self-built Ohrmeter (Ear Meter) – a string instrument fitted with a one-metre-long bass G-string – geographical distances are translated into string lengths and thus into pitches. In collaboration with composer Peter Andreas, the artist undertakes an acoustic land survey of Saxony based on the triangulation network created in 1862 by Christian August Nagel. She refers to an historical method of mapping – but out of surveying, sound is born. This path from geographic territory to a multifaceted sound space, developed systematically, again set my thoughts spinning and searching. Understanding the technical methods of surveying and the system of translating them into tones demands a deeper engagement.

And almost simultaneously, Bignia Wehrli climbs a fir tree with light sources strapped to her hands and feet and documents the movement photographically – simply: Going up the Fir Tree. This coexistence of extremely complex processes and direct physical experience invites diverse approaches to her works. Knowing how a work was created is one aspect – but they are, as I see it, also visual poems that evolve into other interpretations or perspectives.
For an exhibition in the Kunstkästen in Schaffhausen, which I curated, Bignia Wehrli didn’t collect light, but instead let rain fall, drizzle, and drop onto prepared paper. The raindrops inscribed themselves directly onto the blue of the cyanotype. A glance at the sky, a memory of a thunderstorm, of a cold summer day, of raindrops on skin. Searching for traces, laying down traces, dissolving traces.