Can a personal experience be turned into an incisive material form which will enable the viewer to take part in reconstructed memories? This crucial question surrounds Judith Karcheter’s work while, for her, the genesis of a piece is just as important as the result itself. Traces of planned and unplanned events imprisoned in various places of her memory are given a new form through multiple media like photography, collage, drawing or installation in space. The way impressions and reminisced elements are displayed allows the viewer to access very personal works by means of association. However, a complementary approach is needed in order to confer the necessary opening lightness to these works: the cryptic references to horseracing, tricksters, or travels, stage matured and elaborated tableaux of images and artefacts, which Judith Karcheter does not remember as such. In fact, the pieces originate in a constantly expanding “visual memory”, which very concretely takes the shape of a personal collection composed of varied images and artefacts. Judith Karcheter’s works sprout from this archive in a complex, iterative process that one can equivocally describe as some “inner collection”. On the one hand, because it evokes the concentration demanded by every work of art; on the other – and not less importantly – because it connotes the mental collection and combination of elements whose final arrangement becomes a personal joint accumulation of visual parts that were originally scattered.
Not all works by Judith Karcheter are composite: they can consist of just one photograph, which will disclose everything. They can also be comprised of newspaper, illustrations from books and magazines, self-made or found objects. Text and textile too can be woven into the work that eventually embodies the memory of an experience. The conjoined installation always remains coarse and do not coerce the viewer in a prepared understanding of the work. Rather, it allows contemplating each element displayed for itself, out of context. Thus, her works constantly oscillate between an intrinsic capacity for arrangement and openness.

Text: Dennis Jelonnek, 1st part of the text 'Inner Collection'
English translation: Aude Fondard