French-Swiss artist Julian Charrière’s intriguing and often provocative work invites critical reflections on perceiving and engaging with the natural world.
This powerful video installation encapsulates the artist’s thoughts on the tensions between modern societies and ideas of nature. It juxtaposes a fountain of water, a source of life, with the force of fire—an element which has both destroyed and advanced civilizations—to explore the complex coexistence of opposing elements. The installation posits that beneath politics and philosophy lies the original state of our planet, embodied by magma, the molten “liquid fire” churning at the earth’s core.
Julian Charrière
Julian Charrière is a French-Swiss artist, based in Berlin, whose practice encompasses film, photography, performance and sculpture.
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Charrière’s projects often stem from remote fieldwork in liminal or discarded locations. By exploring places where acute geophysical identities have formed—from nuclear test sites to volcanos and icefields—he invites the viewer to speculate on alternative histories through deep geological time. A former student of Olafur Eliasson and a participant in the Institute for Spatial Experiments, Charrière’s projects often facilitate collaborations with scientists, engineers, art historians, and philosophers. Through staged encounters and immersive installation, he critically deconstructs our changing ideas of nature, from Romanticism into the Anthropocene. And by reflecting on our traditional perceptions and representations of the natural world, he seeks to rearticulate planetary narratives for the 21st century.
Charrière’s artworks have been the subject of solo presentation at major institutions including SFMOMA, San Francisco (2022); Langen Foundation, Neuss (2022); Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas (2021); MAMbo, Bologna (2019); Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2018); Parasol Unit Foundation, London (2015); Musée des Beaux Arts, Lausanne (2014); and Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris (2014). He also has been prominently featured at the 59th Biennale di Venezia (2022); the 57th Biennale of Venezia (2017); the Antarctic Biennale (2017); the Taipei Biennial (2018); the 12th and 16th Biennale de Lyon (2013,2022); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2019); Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2019); Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarus (2019); Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London (2018); SCHIRN Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2018), and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2017). A nominee of the Prix Marcel Duchamp in 2021, Charrière in 2022 received the 14th SAM Prize for Contemporary Art.
Website: julian-charriere.net
Instagram: julian.charriere
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