Photography, Poem, Cravat, Pedestal, Telescope and Walldrawing, Städtische Galerie Nordhorn 2011
Inner Collection
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 newspapers, 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 does 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.
Zierrat und Lächeln – an installation done for the Städtische Galerie Nordhorn in 2011 exemplifies Judith Karcheter’s way of working. It was born out of nostalgic depictions of horseracing and the events that unfold on and around the raceground. Wishing to spend a day there, Judith Karcheter returned with a photograph documenting her experience. It was important to her that the photograph features the typical attributes (in her representation) of horseracing: the mandatory hat worn by ladies on the ground and the spyglass allowing them to follow the race. The picture showing the artist in forlorn profile observing, with a spyglass, horses sprinting by prompted more reflection on the topic and generated an installation in space. She wrote a text conveying the impressions of the day under the cover of a fictitious relationship with a jockey. The poem describes the scene unfolding on the racetrack and introduces a new element broadening the scope of the work – namely a cravat obtained from a jockey in exchange for a lucky bow tie. To her collected impressions, the artist added several visual elements pertaining to racing, like a tipped-over number “one”. In this installation, the number “one” serves as a podium for the pink cravat. Judith Karcheter also injects the so-called “colours of racing” in colourful triangles arranged on the wall in a star pattern. The triangles represent the horses speeding by on the track. While a print of the previously described photograph grants access to the work, the telescope serves as a mediator between the picture and the other artefacts, which the viewer will gradually piece together by way of association. And thus, connecting one object after the other, the simulated memory, that Judith Karcheter wished fragmented, takes form. Just like she – owing to her experience – constructed her inner collection of images, by archiving, selecting and organising them, stepwise.
Text: Dennis Jelonnek
English translation: Aude Fondard
