New works by the video artist Judith Albert (b. 1969 in Sarnen) are being shown in a cabinet exhibition. As well as large-format video stills, the artist will be showing video works all produced in 2009. Although Judith Albert is entirely devoted to the moving image, her videos are hardly characterised by major events. Instead, they reveal her as the fine observer of the inconspicuous moment. The videos draw their tension from the slowness of the observation. Reality condenses into a poetic mood-picture. While the works contain a reference to art history, they are also clearly located within a personal pictorial language. In her videos Judith Albert is always her own protagonist. In different roles she appears as a classical nude model or, at the "hour of the wolf", as a fairy-tale figure in the forest. In the work "Space", her white dress shimmers like a negative shadow-picture in the twilight, while she unwinds a gleaming rope and stretches it into a rectangular space.

Her work "Nude" (2005) also refers to art history or to the classical art-form of sculpture: her naked body is placed on a table and, in a 9-minute sequence, shown only as a torso from behind; the only movement is the shadow of the trees seen on the back wall. The new video work, "Nu à l'écharpe orange", showing a female nude on a sofa, refers to painting, or rather to a particular painting by Félix Vallotton ("Nu à l'écharpe verte"). The woman's body - no one but the artist herself, of course - is only covered by a cloth contoured around her hips. In a break with the original painting, a breathing octopus lies on the cloth. Judith Albert finally becomes a real painter in the video "Inside outside". This shows a circular table, with two empty wine glasses, cups and leftover food. Stretched out on the table is the artist's left arm. With a paintbrush she paints the bones under the skin on the surface of the skin. The closing image is the arm of a skeleton: death, as a henchman of transience, joins the vanitas ensemble on the table.

Judith Albert: Haare, 2009

Videostill, Video, 3 Min.
© Judith Albert, 2009

Click on image to enlarge.

With Judith Albert's exhibition, Museum of Art Lucerne is starting a new exhibition format for local, regional artists. The sponsorship of local art-work represents a major task of Museum of Art Lucerne, not least in view of the fact that Museum of Art Lucerne is the most important institution for the communication of visual art in Central Switzerland and receives grants from public bodies.

Regional art-work regularly appears in the traditional annual exhibition, the Kunstgesellschaft exhibition prize, the exhibition of the winner of the Manor Art Prize as well as retrospective solo exhibitions. Both young and renowned and established artists can receive relatively good levels of sponsorship in these formats. But artists of a middle generation who generally earn respect on the regional scene through continuous work are seldom shown. To remedy this, Museum of Art Lucerne has created a new set of exhibitions that will keep between one and three exhibition spaces ready at approximately yearly intervals to give artists with connections to Central Switzerland a window of access to the art-loving public. The selection is made by the Museum's curatorial team and is guided by the question of whether a new development or group of works that is considered exciting can be shown. These exhibitions are designed individually, and for that reason - but also to avoid judgement - not communicated under a label. They represent an autonomous, full-value contribution within the annual programme.

Christoph Lichtin, Curator of the Exhibition

The exhibition was made possible with support from the Josef Müller Foundation Muri.