Clockwork
2014
12 concrete mixing drums, architectural debris from Vienna
Clockwork, a collaboration with Julius von Bismarck, is an installation first created in a contemporary art space in Vienna. It consists of twelve operating concrete mixers, set-up in a circle like the graduations of a clock, and filled with stones coming from several Viennese buildings, samples of urban geological layers from the Baroque period to the present. This 'erosion machine' accelerates the urban decay in an intense uproar. The man-made rectangular shapes of the colliding stones are soon rounded, turning the stones back into rough rocks, before they become dust.
Future Fossil Spaces
2014
steel containers, lithium brine, salt columns
Future Fossil Spaces was first created for the spaces of the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne. The fossils mentioned in the title do not refer to traces of animal or plant life found in rocks, but to the Latin etymology of the word, which translates literally as “obtained from digging”, the action of the artist consisting therefore in proposing, in the present of the exhibition space, works that are in dialectical tension between the two arrows of time, one pointing to the past and the other towards the future. Unfolding on the floor are strangely beautiful coloured landscapes composed of enamelled steel basins filled with saline solutions from Argentinean lithium deposits, resembling the aerial view of the salt beds; rising up are tall columns of salt blocks from the same area marking the tension between a material of the future, lithium, and the length of time required to create the salt.
Monument - Sedimentation of Floating Worlds
2013
195 samples of sand collected from all UN recognized countries, cement
197 x 13 centimeters
For Monument - Sedimentation of Floating Worlds, Julian Charrière has patiently gathered sand from all countries recognised by the UN - a total of 195, some from which it is particularly difficult to get sand. Concrete obtained by mixing these samples with cement has then been casted into a rectangular column, a kind of abstract, synthetic world representation.
On the Sidewalk
2014
drill cores, steel clams
On The Sidewalk is a time collage bringing together drillings from various sites in France, Switzerland and Germany, from a few dozens meters under the artist's studio in Berlin to more than 3'000 meters beneath the Alps. These soil samples have been cut in four in their length, then reassembled in a mix of times and places, and exhibited laying on the ground, pointing out the subjective aspect of the time line taught in history books, as opposed to the vertical, objective geological line.
On the Sidewalk, I Have Forgotten the Dinosauria
2013
80 meters Berlins ground drill core compressed in 5 meters
20 x 554 centimeters
Unique
I Have Forgotten the Dinosauria is an 80 meters Berlins ground drill core compressed in 5 meters. In the multi-layered formation we can recognize the sidewalk bitumen and fossils from deeper strata.
Somehow They Never Stop Doing What They Always Did
2013
210 x 65 centimeters
Unique
In Somehow, They Never Stop Doing What They Always Did, Julian Charrière creates small constructions inside steel and glass showcases, which evoke architectural archetypes, like Babylonian or Amerindian pyramids or mythological towers, like the Babel Tower. They are built with small bricks, made of plaster, fructose and lactose, moistened with water from major rivers around the globe: the Amazon, the Euphrates, the Hudson, the Mekong, the Nile, the Rhin, the Rhône, le Rio Grande and the Yangtze. Bacteria inside the water progressively develop inside the glass case, modifying the aspect and the structure of the constuctions. Charrière therefore shows the action of the Living and Time over architecture, and sets his miniature monuments and their fast decay into History.
Somehow They Never Stop Doing What They Always Did
2013
210 x 65 centimeters
Unique
In Somehow, They Never Stop Doing What They Always Did, Julian Charrière creates small constructions inside steel and glass showcases, which evoke architectural archetypes, like Babylonian or Amerindian pyramids or mythological towers, like the Babel Tower. They are built with small bricks, made of plaster, fructose and lactose, moistened with water from major rivers around the globe: the Amazon, the Euphrates, the Hudson, the Mekong, the Nile, the Rhin, the Rhône, le Rio Grande and the Yangtze. Bacteria inside the water progressively develop inside the glass case, modifying the aspect and the structure of the constuctions. Charrière therefore shows the action of the Living and Time over architecture, and sets his miniature monuments and their fast decay into History.
The Key To The Present Lay In The Future
2014
The Key to the Present Lay in the Future (2014) is made of twenty-five hourglasses containing sand from twenty-five geological periods, thrown against a wall by the artist. All that is left of all those eras suddenly brought together in the same place and at the same time as a result of a powerful act are glass debris and sandy remnants. The hourglass itself is already a perfect metonymy of the link between time and space since it allows an interval of time to be measured by the movement of matter. The work echoes that of Robert Smithson, and in particular his thoughts on the issue of non-sites, and recalls one of his works in particular, Hypothetical Continent (Map of Broken Glass: Atlantis), created in 1969, a pile of glass fragments which make up the fictitious map of a lost continent.
Tropisme
2014
frozen plants, refrigerated showcase
170 x 70 centimeters
Unique
Tropisme is a monumental refrigerated display case in which plants casted in an ice sheath are installed. These ferns, orchids and succulents are amongst the oldest plant species on Earth, since they survived the major extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous, around 65 millions year ago, that led to the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs as well as many other living species. Witnesses of very ancient times that are far below the human scale, living fossils whose DNA survived through time periods and glaciations, Julian Charrière cryopreserves these plants to keep them in an eternal present – as if time could be stopped, and the plants, protected from the effetcs of entropy and decay, archived for the future. This work is also inspired by the science-fiction novel The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard, who imagines Earth, its wildlife and flora back to how they were during Prehistory, hostiles to human beings, themselves dominated by their 'reptilian brain' and tempted by a regression toward a primitive condition. These plants, often found in our daily environment as houseplants, keep close to us a sort of memory of these primitive times.
We Are All Astronauts
2013
263 x 90 centimeters
Unique
We are all Astronauts, whose title is inspired by the writing of Buckminster Fuller, is composed by thirteen abraded world globes, which seem to be floating over a table. The globes date from 1890 to 2011, and the artist has sanded their successive and shifting geopolitical contours until their carefully drawn territories disappeared from their surface. To do so, he created a special 'international sandpaper' with mineral samples from all UN recognized countries, a remnant from one of his previous work, Sedimentation of Floating Worlds. The dust created by the abrasion gently settled on the table beneath the globes, creating new, yet to be defined cartographies.
