ART CITIES:London-Julian Charrière
Much of Julian Charrière’s work is concerned with time, the continuous cycle of past, present and future, as well as sudden and gradual physical transformations that have occurred naturally or due to human activity. Creating works while exploring ecological and environmental issues in specific locations, Charrière examines how humanity interrelates with the natural order.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art Archive
His first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom, “For They That Sow the Wind” includes sculpture, documented performance, installations, photographs and film. Much of his work is concerned with time, the continuous cycle of past, present and future, as well as sudden and gradual physical transformations that have occurred naturally or due to human activity. Creating works while exploring ecological and environmental issues in specific locations, Julian Charrière examines how humanity interrelates with the natural order. In this sense, his work is site-specific, and to Parasol Unit he brings seven installations, the first of which is “Future Fossil Spaces”, a mass of salt bricks extracted from the Salar de Uyuni salt deposits of the ‘lithium triangle’ or Bolivia, South America. The film “Somewhere” and the photographic series “Polygon”, meanwhile, document the devastation caused by 456 Soviet nuclear tests enacted between 1949 and 1989 in Khazakstan. Charrière’s investigations for Polygon were prompted by J.G. Ballard’s short story, The Terminal Beach. In the upper gallery, three installations make connections between past and future via the fleeting present. While raising existentialist questions they also have an ethereal beauty. In a series of large photographs “The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories” Charrière is seen as a fragile silhouette melting the iceberg beneath his feet with a blowtorch. The image acts as a catalyst, a projection surface, inviting every spectator to imagine being the protagonist. In “We Are All Astronauts”, various globes, ranging from 1890 to 2011, appear to float over a large table. The artist has eliminated geopolitical divisions between countries, continents and people by sanding the surface of each globe and allowing their dust to intermingle on the table top. He uses an “international sandpaper” he produced from mineral samples gathered from all countries recognised by the United Nations. The final work continues Charrière’s dystopic themes in “Tropisme”, several plants which have existed during the Cretaceous period were shock-frozen at –196 ̊C, or sealed and frozen at –20 ̊C. As long as they remain in this state, these plants will continue to represent a merge between past and future.
Info: Curator: Ziba Ardalan, Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, 14 Wharf Road, London, Duration: 15/1-23/23/3/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, Sun 12:00-17:00, http://parasol-unit.org
