Julian Charrière (born 1987) is a French-Swiss conceptual artist currently[when?] living and working in Berlin.[1] He uses several artistic approaches including photography, performance, sculpture, and video, to address concepts relating to time and human's relationship to the natural world.[2]
Early life and education
Charrière was born in Morges, Switzerland, to a Swiss father and French mother. He studied art at the École cantonale d'art du Valais in Switzerland before moving to Berlin to finish his degree at the Universität der Künste where he graduated in 2013 from Olafur Eliasson's Institute of Spatial Experiments.[3]
Career
Charrière's research-driven practice fuses together art, science, and anthropology, highlighting the tensions resulting from our modern world. Inspired by land artists such as Robert Smithson as well as writers like author J. G. Ballard and philosophers Dehlia Hannah and Timothy Morton, his work contributes to a discussion of social and environmental implications of the advancements which have pushed society forward.[4] These ideas link Charrière to the 19th century Romantic era during which human's place within the world was reexamined as a response to the industrial revolution and humanist philosophy.[5] Throughout his body of work Charrière experiments with nonconventional materials and methods for the symbolic significance that they carry. Time is often utilised as a motif in his artworks, as they are intended to be created and exist within their own timeline while commenting on their place within the broader human timescale.[6]
Charrière is interested in the concept of fossils as physical markers of time and more specifically what artifacts will be left behind to shape future generations' interpretations of his era.[7] Charrière has crafted a "geo-archaeology of the future."[vague][7] Geological specimens being the only form of documentation of Earth's early eons, the artist reinterpreted this idea to create the series Metamorphism wherein electronic waste is melted together with artificial lava and transformed into natural-looking rocks, essentially returning the technological devices to the raw materials from which they are made.[8] This project is one of several sculptural series by Charrière using natural and human-made materials which provides a physical commentary on the increasingly digitalized world.
Much of his work has been the result of various expeditions around the world, focusing on locations impacted by humanity.[9] Such locations visited by Charrière include the Semipalatinsk Test Site, a former USSR nuclear test site, and its American equivalent, the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. As a result of these two journeys, Charrière created a series of photographs documenting the desolate remnants of the sites developed from analog film exposed to nuclear materials, giving the invisible force of radioactivity a visible presence within the images.[10][11] In addition, Julian Charrière also co-wrote with Nadim Samman – with whom he traveled – As We Used to Float, straddling the genres of travelog and critical essay. Described as: "toggling between a personal account of a sea journey, above and below water, and a critical investigation of postcolonial geography, As We Used to Float develops broader reflections on place and subjectivity".[12]
Charrière has received several awards. He was awarded the Kiefer Hablitzel Award during the Swiss Art Awards in 2013 and 2015. In 2016 Charrière received the Kaiserring Stipendium für Junge Kunst which resulted in a solo exhibition at the Mönchehaus Museum Goslar in Germany.[13] In 2018 the artist received the Prix Mobilière [14] which honors young artists addressing particularly socially relevant issues and make up new collective perspectives with their positions; as well as the GASAG Kunstpreis,[15] awarded every two years to outstanding artistic positions at the intersection of art, science, and technology. In 2021, he was nominated for the Prix-Marcel-Duchamp,[16] as well as for the Hans-Purrmann-Prize [17] and the Prix de la Fondation Choi pour l'art contemporain.[18] In 2021 Charrière was invited by the artists-in-labs KAUST-Swiss Residency Exchange for a three-month Artist Residency in Saudi Arabia.[19]
In addition to working as a solo artist, Charrière has collaborated with other artists, being a member of the Berlin-based artist collective, Das Numen. The collective has exhibited across Europe and has received several awards.[20] In 2012, Charrière collaborated with the artist Julius von Bismarck on the site-specific performance piece Some Pigeons Are More Equal Than Others for the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale.[21] The two have continued to work together, producing several exhibitions in tandem with one another.
The artist became the subject of international news in March 2017 when Berlin police were called to his studio after the testing of his new piece commenting on peaceful scientific development and the dangers of climate change entitled The Purchase of the South Pole. The three-meter long air cannon was originally meant to shoot coconuts from the Bikini Atoll as a part of the first Antarctic Biennale. Because of its seizure the artwork never made it to Antarctica and currently[when?] remains in the custody of the German authorities.[22]
In the course of his invitation to the Antarctic Biennial 2017, the artist developed a new body of work in which he intensively explored the polar regions and their mode of representation in the collective visual memory of the 21st century.[23] This resulted in his most extensive film work at that point, Towards No Earthly Pole,[24] which formed a focal point in the artist's three solo exhibitions of the same name (MASI Lugano, 2019,[25]Aargauer Kunsthaus, 2020,[26]Dallas Museum of Art, 2021[27]). The exhibitions became a journey through the cosmos of the artist, while offering an exploration of the impact of human activity on nature. Charrière uses the two opposing elements of ice and fire to symbolize change and transformation and the contrast between them defines the exhibitions and guides through them. His curiosity and interest in understanding the environment lead him to areas that are global flashpoints for our past, present, and future. A publication is dedicated to the film work Towards No Earthly Pole and places it in a context throughout essays written by leading scholars from the disciplines of philosophy, film research, and art history including Francesca Benini,[28] Amanda Boetzkes,[29] Katherine Brodbeck,[30] Dehlia Hannah,[31] Scott MacKenzie[32] & Anna Westerstahl Stenport,[33] Shane McCorristine,[34] Nadim Samman[35] and Katrin Weilenmann[36] as well as a conversation between the artist and Prof. Dr. Konrad Steffen, Professor of Climate and Cryosphere at ETH Zurich and EPFL.[37]
In 2021, Charrière participated in the Leister Expedition Around North Greenland 2021, a Swiss-Danish expedition. Its primary purpose was to conduct research into climate change in the Arctic.[38] During the expedition, the team landed on a 300-meter-long islet, created by mud and soil, believed to be Oodaaq island, only later to realize they actually had just discovered the northernmost island of Greenland's coast. Charrière, the only artist invited to take part in the expedition covered the discovery.[39][40]
In early 2023, the French fashion brand Zadig & Voltaire was criticized for a promotional Instagram video featuring a flaming fountain after social media users said it bore a striking resemblance to Charrière's video work And Beneath It All Flows Liquid Fire (2019).[42]
Desert Now, (in collaboration with Julius von Bismarck and Felix Kiessling) Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, USA, 2016[55]
Objects In Mirror Might Be Closer Than They Appear, (in collaboration with Julius von Bismarck) Villa Bernasconi, Grand-Lancy, Switzerland, 2016
Siempre cuenta cuántos cuentos cuentas, Despacio, San José, Costa Rica, 2016[56]
Das Numen – Meatus, Dittrich & Schlechtriem, Berlin, Germany, 2017[57]
Ever Since We Crawled Out, Galerie Tschudi, Zuoz, Germany, 2017[58]
Julius von Bismarck und Julian Charrière. I'm Afraid I Must Ask You to Leave, with Julius von Bismarck, Kunstpalais Erlangen, Erlangen, Germany, 2018[59]
An Invitation to Disappear, Ben Brown Fine Arts, Hong Kong, China, 2018[60]
GASAG Kunstpreis 2018: Julian Charrière. As We Used to Float, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany, 2018[61]
An Invitation to Disappear | Giétro 2018 – 1818, Dam of Mauvoisin, Musée de Bagnes, Le Châble, Switzerland, 2018
An Invitation to Disappear, Kunsthalle Mainz, Mainz, Germany, 2018[62]
Twin Earth, with Marguerite Humeau, SALTS, Basel, Switzerland, 2019[63]
All We Ever Wanted Was Everything and Everywhere, MAMbo, Bologna, Italy, 2019[64]
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