The Munich-based artist began in a very classical way: she moved to Oberammergau and came back as a wood sculptor, only to move on to London to study art, design and communications. Since then, she has steadily expanded her artistic spectrum: it ranges from performance to video and photography to comic books, ceramics, objects and installations ...not to forget: drawings. The gallery is showing a selection from the series 'Dark Collages'.
Read MoreJudith Egger is like a system of satellites orbiting around a central theme, namely 'energy'. Not just any physical unit. No, she is interested in the primordial energy. This pure energy that flows through everything that exists ... that gives life the initial spark so that it begins to breathe. This all-encompassing, pure energy fascinates Judith Egger because it is in all of us and drives us like an engine. The vital, creative, visionary element in us is given the spark it needs to enter the world.
Judith Eggers' cartoon-like drawings, spiced with a good pinch of the legendary 'dark humour' of the British, tell of this power. Amorphous masses swell, swell and push in all directions to grow and develop. But it is not easy for them - geometric structures put up quite a fight against the developmental urge of the bulging mass of life. They set the direction and keep the untamed 'life force' in check.
The vitality of life is increasingly disappearing from our society. Judith Egger observes this development attentively, in which life is more and more constructed and controlled, but less and less lived. The artist's observations flow into works that are often carried by a delightful irony. Her 'insect hotels' are a fine example. The source of inspiration was the local DIY stores in and around Munich. Various models of such a so-called insect hotel can be purchased there. 'Interesting', says Judith Egger, a certain ambiguity caught her eye here.
Perfectly styled gardens, in which a privately motivated land consolidation is carried out, in which flora and fauna do not feel welcome. And that is why one puts such an insect hotel in the garden to offer 'nesting aids' to wild bees and ladybirds. 'Environmental protection is 'in' and we're in" is the motto. It's a shame that most of these nesting aids are not visited by the beneficial flying and crawling creatures, because they simply do not meet their natural needs. Against this background, Judith Egger's advertisement for her versions of an insect hotel is to be understood with irony through and through.
Text courtesy Boutwell Schabrowsky.
