Sherwood Forest was Robin Hood’s hiding place, Andreas Hofer concealed himself on the Pfandler Alm, Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, the Italian Mafia boss “Mamma” Pelle behind a cupboard in his own house.
But it is not only people who are sought by pursuers or the police who require hiding places. In fact, everyone needs a good hiding place – throughout their lives. The need begins during childhood, when “hide and seek” and “catch” are among the most important of games. The requirement continues through the uncertain pupation phases of puberty and into married life, when the partners disappear separately into workshops, vegetable gardens or fitness studios; it is there in various life crises, during which we throw ourselves into hiding places such as drugs, mania or hobbies. A good hiding place, therefore, protects us not only from the grasp of others or from being found; it can do so much more. Besides protection, it may also help create our own fantasies. It produces an intimate parallel world – removed from our surroundings and from time.

The direct intention of Esther Strauß’ sculpture entitled Das Versteck [The Hiding Place] is to generate such an intimate atmosphere.
In addition, the sculpture can be utilized. At the back of the capsule, a hatch can be opened and closed, and one person can climb in and conceal him- or herself there. A single porthole enables this individual to see what is happening outside.
Externally, the sculpture with its six little legs and its gilt surface resembles a moon landing module, albeit reduced in size. Space capsules are particularly good hiding places: they are actually removed from the world and therefore equipped with their own atmosphere for survival. Das Versteck [The Hiding Place] conjures an expedition to the moon in one other respect: there are two versions of the capsule. One version is exhibited by Esther Strauß in the lively public space of Innsbruck, the other is concealed somewhere in a secret location in the Tyrol. The person who chances upon this second version / the original, is the only one who can truly conceal himself there.
There is a similar pair in space travel, with the duo “return capsule” (remains in a controlled orbit) and the “landing module”. The waiting astronaut in the return capsule and all those passers-by who briefly test Das Versteck [The Hiding Place] in public space will probably feel a similar longing for more.

In addition, the facetted external form of the capsule is charged with meaning. If you climb into the Das Versteck [The Hiding Place] and close the hatch, you will find yourself inside a crystal – in a very similar way to a fly in amber or beautiful Snow White in her crystal coffin. You are dead but simultaneously not dead.

This special form has enjoyed a long tradition in our culture since the Romantic era. Paradoxically, there is a formal rapprochement between the hard, eternal world of the crystal and the entirely precarious. This is revealed, for example, in the diamond shape of the perfume bottle, in the bossed form of coffins, or in the faceted external membrane of the Stealth Bomber. In this way, it seems as if an attempt is being made to counteract the horrors of transience and death with the endless ages of geological cycles. In a kind of alchemist invocation, the crystal is set against constant passing and fading – after all, it is even capable of capturing light!

In recent decades this rapprochement has produced a great many impressive examples in the field of architecture. In particular, crystalline buildings have been dedicated to fleeting media such as film, music or fashion. The Berlin chamber music hall, the glass-crystalline UFA-Kinopalast in Dresden, the open-air concert stage in Grafenegg (Lower Austria), the Casa da Musica in Porto, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, the Prada flagship store, and the Jimbocho theatre in Tokyo: these are all crystalline settings for transient forms of art, huge phials – so to speak – intended to preserve the scent of fleeting commodities for just a little longer.
This symbolism is also frequently employed for museums of fine art: the MUMOK in Vienna seems to consist of sheer basalt lava, the polished concrete of the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein shines like black obsidian, the matt glass façades of Kunsthaus Bregenz make the solitary building resemble a huge block of calcite, the extensions to the Kunsthalle in Hamburg and the Kirchner Museum in Davos are staged as framed white gemstones, and the Museum der Moderne on Salzburg’s Mönchsberg is happy to project as a rock crystal. Leipzig’s art museum, opened in 2004, was even described in the F.A.Z. as a “glowing druse”.
But isolated, freestanding prisms are not a new invention in architecture. Bruno Taut laid the foundation stone with his fantastic sketches of alpine glass architecture, and since the Functionalists they have been climbing to dizzy heights all over the world. The current Second Modernism also favours crystalline forms.

Das Versteck [The Hiding Place] by Esther Strauß, by contrast, is an individual capsule. Experiencing its interior is probably equally important to its external form. Here, it takes up concepts of the minimalist “housing cells” that have been developed by artists like Absalon and Andrea Zittel, or architects like Friedrich Kiesler, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Archigram and Hans Hollein. They are always simultaneously prototypes for a new way of living.

I don’t imagine being inside the Das Versteck [The Hiding Place] by Esther Strauß is particularly comfortable. There is no chair in there, no place to lie down. Do you crouch on the floor in the space like an unborn baby? The sculpture would then be a kind of amniotic sac where we would ideally work on our “inner space”. It would even be possible to celebrate a rebirthing there! Who knows what might be hatched inside, and together with, a good hiding place?
There is no doubt that it will get stifling and warm in such a small space. Possibly, it would be feasible to enjoy spiritual experiences inside it, like in a shamanic sweatlodge or an orgone accumulator based on Wilhelm Reich’s ideas. Our own energies will circulate wildly in the interior, anyway, and lightning strikes from above, by  contrast, will stay outside – like with Faraday’s cage.
But perhaps it is as pleasant inside as the giant shell from the children’s book Urmel from the Ice Age: “I can think so well in here. The sun comes up and sets, and crosses the sky above me.
And the moon appears and disappears and crosses the sky above, and the stars move high above me, too…”

Vitus H. Weh