Judith Röder came to Lower Silesia attracted by the charming landscape of the region, which has been part of Poland for a relatively short time. Looking for connotations with what she knew well, she visited places whose visuality and spatial experience she could analyze in depth. In her understanding, a landscape is much more than a picturesque, still image of a city or village, a paean to the natural forces or beauty of nature, it is a record of historical events, cultural and social transformations. Above all, it is a portrait of the currently constructed identity of a place, simultaneously intertwined with the former one, which was shaping it before. An image of previous and current residents, as well as their understanding of the world.
During her residence, the German artist noticed many spaces whose status has frequently changed and continues to change. Abandoned towns, disappearing palaces and factories, nature seizing back what has been taken from it, the complete replacement of inhabitants and the influence of different cultures, the dematerialization of the tissue built up by civilization and its rebuilding seem to constitute an anthropocentric perspective of human life on Earth and with the earth. Judith Röder has captured these changes in the frame, turning the camera's eye into a window directed towards the inside of the historical microprocesses.
The effects of her work will be presented during a work-in-progress presentation held at the BWA Wrocław Studio gallery. The opening will take place at 7 p.m. on Friday, 24 August, and the presentation will be open throughout the weekend of 25 and 26 August. Admission is free.
Judith Röder - visual artist, educated in the field of glass design at the Institute of Ceramics and Glass Arts at the University of Applied Sciences in Koblenz (Hochschule Koblenz). She is currently studying film at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln). In her works she uses natural materials, which she likes to combine with new technologies, but it is always the glass that plays a pivotal role there. In her installations, demure panes serve both as a screen for ephemeral projections and a place for capturing traces of phenomena that escape sensual perception.
