SAINT LOUIS-The Saint Louis Art Museum opens the exhibit Lærke Lauta: The Accident, the thirteenth installation in the Museum's New Media Series.

Lærke Lauta's video installations draw from a northern European tradition that ascribes romantic, spiritual and enigmatic qualities to the natural landscape. Lauta's works are characterized by an undertone of unresolved suspense, the latent fear of a fatal event that is not directly revealed. Lauta's camera does not present a decisive moment but functions instead as an instrument of premonition and doubt.

The Accident focuses on the search for someone who is lost. People patrol a wooded landscape calling out one name—"Benedikte"—receiving only echoes in reply. In the course of The Accident, the setting changes from a wooded glen to a limestone quarry. Fog sets in, enhancing the ambiguity of the environment. A young woman seems to undergo several rites of passage during her journey, which is staged as a series of circular repetitions to give the impression that time is simultaneously moving forward and standing still.

Lærke Lauta (Danish, born 1974) studied at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and the Cooper Union in New York. She has shown extensively in Denmark at venues including Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art and Kunstforeningen GL Strand, both in Copenhagen, and at the Arhaus Kunstbygning, in Arhaus. She has also participated in group shows at the ICA London and at venues in Rotterdam and Amsterdam. This is Lauta's first solo exhibition in North America.

Curated by Robin Clark, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and former associate curator of contemporary art at the Saint Louis Art Museum, The Accident will be on view in Gallery 301 from through July 27, 2008.