post-title Julian Charrière | Into The Hollow | Dittrich + Schlechtriem | 29.04.-25.06.2016

Julian Charrière | Into The Hollow | Dittrich + Schlechtriem | 29.04.-25.06.2016

Julian Charrière | Into The Hollow | Dittrich + Schlechtriem | 29.04.-25.06.2016

Julian Charrière | Into The Hollow | Dittrich + Schlechtriem | 29.04.-25.06.2016

until 25.06. | #0522ARTatBerlin | Lars Dittrich and André Schlechtriem present since the 29th April 2016 a solo exhibition by Julian Charrière entitled “Into The Hollow”.

For his third solo exhibition with the gallery in Berlin, Charrière will transform the space into a cabinet of geological curiosities from a possible postdigital era with an installation where selected pieces of manipulated molten rock are displayed in vitrines like topological fragments in a natural history museum from a time yet to come.

 

The presented objects are hybrids of congealed magma. Charrière has melted, transmuted and amalgamated current technological gadgets (smartphones, notebooks, hard drives etc.), including their stored memory, within molten rock. Through this artificial process, the artist forces the transfer of digital to geological strata in which only the potential of the previous storage powers remains. “The precious metals contained in these sculptural stones—the ecologically problematic and economically controversial basis of our digital world—are mined in the furthest reaches of the Earth, and ultimately have been returned in Charrière’s metaphorical transformation process to their original form.“ (Julia Brennacher, “Living in The Anthopocene,” in The Forces Behind the Forms: Geology, Matter, Process in Contemporary Art, Cologne: Snoeck, 2016)
In bringing all these metal components together and by artificially returning them to their geological origins, Charrière re-creates a primal epicenter, making a connection between the very beginnings of our Earth, current industrial and technological processes and projecting a possible future. In his play with future geologies, Charrière constructs a synthetic image of a future past, a place where the traces of our civilization will hide among rock formations.
Charrière’s Into The Hollow encourages us to reflect on the circulation of the materials that are now melted into the stones as well as the relevance of deep mining as a necessary process for their extraction. The source of these materials, the physical open pit mines, represent the locus for the ingredients that drive our communication and technological society, while physically also constituting a negative image or inversion of the Biblical Tower of Babel.
From today’s mine to tomorrow’s monuments.
These minerals are excavated at different locations around the world, then shipped to countries like India, China or the United States to be assembled into technological devices, a process that may be considered a cultural crystallization of a globalized production scheme. Materials sourced from various geographies are brought together in physical objects by which we are all digitally connected.
When these become outdated they are sent to e-waste sites, where they are handpicked and separated in order to fuel more technology, thus re-entering the circulation process. Charrière interrupts this recycling flow by prematurely transmuting these delicate devices. Through this forcible intervention, he initiates a geoartistic reflection on our digital consumer culture, a ‘geo-reset’: back to the future.
A full exhibition catalog including a text by Paul Feigelfeld will be published and available through the gallery.

Vernissage: Friday, 29th April 2016, 5 – 9 p.m.

Exhibition period: Friday, 29th April to Saturday, 25th June 2016

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Image caption: via Dittrich + Schlechtriem (Installation view)

Exhibition Julian Charrière – Dittrich + Schlechtriem – Kunst in Berlin ART at Berlin

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