Digesting Geometry
2011
Hahnemühle baryta paper
20 x 30 centimeters
Digesting Geometry documents a series of interventions performed with pigeons in public spaces in Berlin, London, Paris, and other cities. Sunflower seeds are placed on the ground in different geometric shapes. Attracted by the food, the surrounding pigeons pecks at the seeds, creating geometrical figures which disappear and reappear every time they get disturbed. The figure of the pigeon, this once domesticated bird which served as messenger, has lost its usefulness and is seen as a out of control parasite occupying the urban landscape. With his performance, Charrière tames the birds back into structured, ordered patterns, lifting them out of their apparent chaos and reintroducing them into the geometry of our lives.
Panorama - Behind the scene
2011
Panorama consist of a series of photographs seemingly depicting majestic alpine landscapes under various weather conditions, showing snowy peaks emerging from snowy valleys or mountain panoramas lit by a fleeting rainbow. But images are not always what they seem to be, and indeed, what Julian Charrière shot in this series are different ephemeral interventions, produced site-specifically in various construction sites in Berlin. The artist used extracted soil that was covered by flour and fire extinguisher foam to generate miniature, model Alps inspired by his native Switzerland in the middle of the city. With this work the artist question not only how perception works, but also our fantasized relation to "Nature" and the sublime, while playing the demiurge on his own, limited scale.
Panorama 52° 29' 51.18" N 13° 22' 17 40"E
2011
c-print on Alu-Dibond
72 x 107 centimeters
Panorama consist of a series of photographs seemingly depicting majestic alpine landscapes under various weather conditions, showing snowy peaks emerging from snowy valleys or mountain panoramas lit by a fleeting rainbow. But images are not always what they seem to be, and indeed, what Julian Charrière shot in this series are different ephemeral interventions, produced site-specifically in various construction sites in Berlin. The artist used extracted soil that was covered by flour and fire extinguisher foam to generate miniature, model Alps inspired by his native Switzerland in the middle of the city. With this work the artist question not only how perception works, but also our fantasized relation to "Nature" and the sublime, while playing the demiurge on his own, limited scale.
Panorama 52° 29' 55.04" N 13° 22' 18.01" E
2011
70 x 105 centimeters
Panorama consist of a series of photographs seemingly depicting majestic alpine landscapes under various weather conditions, showing snowy peaks emerging from snowy valleys or mountain panoramas lit by a fleeting rainbow. But images are not always what they seem to be, and indeed, what Julian Charrière shot in this series are different ephemeral interventions, produced site-specifically in various construction sites in Berlin. The artist used extracted soil that was covered by flour and fire extinguisher foam to generate miniature, model Alps inspired by his native Switzerland in the middle of the city. With this work the artist question not only how perception works, but also our fantasized relation to "Nature" and the sublime, while playing the demiurge on his own, limited scale.
Panorama 52° 31' 10.81" N 13° 24' 44.14" E
2011
c-print on Alu-Dibond
72 x 107 centimeters
Panorama consist of a series of photographs seemingly depicting majestic alpine landscapes under various weather conditions, showing snowy peaks emerging from snowy valleys or mountain panoramas lit by a fleeting rainbow. But images are not always what they seem to be, and indeed, what Julian Charrière shot in this series are different ephemeral interventions, produced site-specifically in various construction sites in Berlin. The artist used extracted soil that was covered by flour and fire extinguisher foam to generate miniature, model Alps inspired by his native Switzerland in the middle of the city. With this work the artist question not only how perception works, but also our fantasized relation to "Nature" and the sublime, while playing the demiurge on his own, limited scale.
Some Pigeons Are More Equal Than Others
2012
38 x 27 centimeters
Some Pigeons Are More Equal Than Others is a collaboration with Julius Von Bismarck and has been performed and exhibited in Copenhagen, Venice, and Berlin. It engages the city as a robust spatial ecology of things, perceptions, movements and constant surprise. It includes a pigeon trapping apparatus designed by the artists. This apparatus is installed in public space to catch and airbrush pigeons as they move through the city. The pigeons are painted, dressed with vibrant, nontoxic dyes, rendered and released back into the urban environments we all share and constitute by this sharing. While the paint is harmless to the health of the pigeons, it destabilizes the safety of our perceptions concerning the roles, art, institutions, and urban species—including humans, when species meet in public space, the space of their rights and of our everyday lives. Painted pigeons meet each different city on its own material terms—as a horizon of different species and perceptions which co-constitute each other, and renegotiate those terms.
The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories
2013
100 x 150 centimeters
Unique
The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories is the photographic trace of an expedition the artist undertook in 2013, travelling to Iceland to climb an iceberg in the Arctic Ocean and melt the frozen water beneath his feet with a gas torch during 8 hours. Like an absurd, quixotic hero, Julian Charrière confronts the elements in a seemingly hopeless battle – human time against geological time. And yet, a battle of which global warming is only the starting point. What remains of this perilous endeavor are three photographs of arresting beauty, a kind of contemporary version of Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer Overlooking the Sea of Fog (1817 – 18), and a questioning of our relation to nature as inherited from the Romantics via ecological thought.
The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories
2013
photography
100 x 150 centimeters
Unique
The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories is the photographic trace of an expedition the artist undertook in 2013, travelling to Iceland to climb an iceberg in the Arctic Ocean and melt the frozen water beneath his feet with a gas torch during 8 hours. Like an absurd, quixotic hero, Julian Charrière confronts the elements in a seemingly hopeless battle – human time against geological time. And yet, a battle of which global warming is only the starting point. What remains of this perilous endeavor are three photographs of arresting beauty, a kind of contemporary version of Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer Overlooking the Sea of Fog (1817 – 18), and a questioning of our relation to nature as inherited from the Romantics via ecological thought.
The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories
2013
performance
The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories is the photographic trace of an expedition the artist undertook to Iceland, to climb an iceberg in the Arctic Ocean and melt the frozen water beneath his feet with a gas torch during 8 hours. Like an absurd, quixotic hero, Julian Charrière confronts the elements in a seemingly hopeless battle – human time against geological time. And yet, a battle of which global warming is only the starting point. What remains of this perilous endeavor are three photographs, a kind of contemporary version of Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer Overlooking the Sea of Fog (1817–1818), and a questioning of our relation to nature as inherited from the Romantics via ecological thought.
The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories (2)
2013
Fine Art print on Hahnemühle photo paper
126 x 190 centimeters
The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories is the photographic trace of an expedition the artist undertook in 2013, travelling to Iceland to climb an iceberg in the Arctic Ocean and melt the frozen water beneath his feet with a gas torch during 8 hours. Like an absurd, quixotic hero, Julian Charrière confronts the elements in a seemingly hopeless battle – human time against geological time. And yet, a battle of which global warming is only the starting point. What remains of this perilous endeavor are three photographs of arresting beauty, a kind of contemporary version of Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer Overlooking the Sea of Fog (1817 – 18), and a questioning of our relation to nature as inherited from the Romantics via ecological thought.
