Based in Berlin, Julian Charrière was born in Morges to a French mother and a Swiss father. He studied at the Valais School of Art, then at Berlin University of the Arts, and finally at the Institut für Raumexperimente, directed by Olafur Eliasson. It was there that he met artist Julius von Bismarck, with whom he has since collaborated several times. He has also collaborated with scientists, engineers, musicians, art historians, and philosophers, with the aim of understanding the human relationship with nature.
This artist who constantly questions the state of the earth’s resources once explained: “I like to conceive of art as a tool for saying something about broad abstractions”. In reference to his 2021 exhibition at Centre Pompidou, he added: “I have been very interested in the chemical cycles of materials, specifically the carbon cycle, to which we have been greatly contributing ever since the industrial revolution by burning fossil fuels […]”. Julian Charrière has always placed the question of ecology at the centre of his reflections, without seeking to ride today’s green wave.
By combining art, science and anthropology, and through first-hand exploration of remote lands with hostile terrains and climates (like Bolivia, Iceland, the North Pole, Russia, and Somalia), he casts a critical eye on the consequences of the Anthropocene: melting glaciers, exploitation of rare lands, nuclear tests, radioactive sites, the forest industry, soil extraction, and the state of the sea bed.
With a meticulous aesthetic that is constantly renewed to create new worlds of imagination, his performances, photographs, films and installations acutely show how humans inhabit the world. Far from limiting himself to the documentary dimension, his work more comprehensively questions our mistaken or superficial conception of nature, and the way scientific, literary or popular narratives shape our idea of “reality”, woven from cosmology and cosmogony.
This artist who constantly questions the state of the earth’s resources once explained: “I like to conceive of art as a tool for saying something about broad abstractions”. In reference to his 2021 exhibition at Centre Pompidou, he added: “I have been very interested in the chemical cycles of materials, specifically the carbon cycle, to which we have been greatly contributing ever since the industrial revolution by burning fossil fuels […]”. Julian Charrière has always placed the question of ecology at the centre of his reflections, without seeking to ride today’s green wave.
By combining art, science and anthropology, and through first-hand exploration of remote lands with hostile terrains and climates (like Bolivia, Iceland, the North Pole, Russia, and Somalia), he casts a critical eye on the consequences of the Anthropocene: melting glaciers, exploitation of rare lands, nuclear tests, radioactive sites, the forest industry, soil extraction, and the state of the sea bed.
With a meticulous aesthetic that is constantly renewed to create new worlds of imagination, his performances, photographs, films and installations acutely show how humans inhabit the world. Far from limiting himself to the documentary dimension, his work more comprehensively questions our mistaken or superficial conception of nature, and the way scientific, literary or popular narratives shape our idea of “reality”, woven from cosmology and cosmogony.
