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Judith Mall - Artist 

Judith Mall, born in 1983, lives and works in Hamburg, Germany.
She studied illustration at the University of Applied Sciences Hamburg and fine art at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe.

Judith Mall’s work comprises series of large scale charcoal drawings.
These are representational images that form an associative narrative – her work is about the composition of moments.
Occasionally, single pictures in it seem almost banal. Many of her drawings are as detailed, seem as accurately observed, as unemotionally displayed, as a photograph in a catalogue of goods. They seem as innocent as the drawings in a children's book. But something is wrong with this banality, something seems to vibrate under its surface. As though the world depicted in it was just a thin membrane behind which something different is hiding. The attention to detail itself upsets the depicted and flips it back and forth like a flip image, revealing a second subject to the viewer who changes perspective. The rough carpet in a living room turns into a lawn turns into a carpet turns into a lawn… The holes of a wall socket become abysses become holes become abysses…

Seen individually, each picture seems to be a random instant in an endless series of moments. Seen together however, they narrate a place and an event. The assembly of images fills each single picture with poetry and challenges the viewer to become narrator and detective, to review and modify the order of the drawings, to keep reassessing and questioning the single pictures.
The fact that Judith Mall exclusively allows the colors black and white (the black of the charcoal and the white of the paper) in her works is a limitation that fits wonderfully into her work. Drawings often dominated by dark grey and deep black with only few pure white patches set the tone of her narrations and remind the viewer of film noir storyboards – except that Mall's work in fact does not lay out any evidence that simply wants to be recounted.
Quite to the contrary, it seems as though the images do not want to retain their meaning at all. It trickles down from them just like the black dust that keeps falling on the floor of Judith Mall's studio with each stroke of the charcoal pencil.

Benjamin Maack

Education 

2004 - 2010

University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg

2016 - 2017

State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe

Awards 

2010

DAAD Scholarship for Japan

Exhibitions 

2018

2017

2016

2015

2013

2012

Airborne, Curva Pura, Rome (S)

Palpable Doubt, Westwerk, Hamburg (G)
Eye Eye, Transpop Gallery, Kyoto (G)

Beyond Halfway Beach, Galerie erstererster, Berlin (S)
Beyond Halfway Beach, Galerie zeitraumrexit, Mannheim (S)
Lati Muti, Casa Forte, Neapel (G)

Sich lichtender Nebel, Kunstverein Wiesbaden (G)

Beunruhigende Bilder, Galerie ZeitRaumExit, Mannheim (G)
Dunkles Kneten, Westwerk Hamburg (G)

Advento Advento, Hi-Nest Bldg., Kyoto (G)
Between Mountains, Murasakino Gallery, Kyoto (G)
Dreams Please, Transpop Gallery, Kyoto (S)

2011

2010

2009

Subarashii, Frappant, Hamburg (G)

Suzamakato, Transpop Gallery, Kyoto (G)
Secret Volume, Galerie Linda, Hamburg (S)

Schaufenster, Fabrik der Künste, Hamburg (G)
Fenster mit Ausblick, Frappant, Hamburg (G)
Verbrechen, Galerie Hinterconti, Hamburg; Galerie Vorwerkstift, Hamburg (G)

2008

Ich bin hier viel zu selten, Inselgalerie, Berlin (G)

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photo credits:
installation view of »Tower« by Miguel Ferraz
reproductions of Halfway Beach by Tillmann Engel http://www.tillmannengel.de/
reproductions of all other images by Maximilian Probst https://maximilianprobst.de/

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