In 2014, artist Julian Charrière was offered the chance to go on a diving expedition in Cocos Island, off Costa Rica, as part of an art project. The only problem: He didn’t know how to dive. It was March in Berlin, and the only place to get his certification was in the East Berlin lake Müggelsee. The water was freezing cold, with extremely poor visibility.
Five weeks later, he was on his way to the remote Pacific island. There, he was dazzled by the sights he witnessed on his night dives: schools of hammerheads in a feeding frenzy, gigantic whale sharks, and swooping manta rays. “In terms of diving, it’s kind of as good as it gets,” he said in an interview.
The time Charrière spent underwater during and after that trip profoundly influenced his artistic career. Based in Berlin, the Swiss French artist is known for his photography, installation, and video works that center human relationships to nature, in all its awesome, overwhelming glory. The crackling flames of open-pit coal mines, nuclear test sites, and the Arctic Ocean have all provided backdrops for his impressive, research-driven practice. These examples, alongside a range of new and older work, are currently on view at the Museum Tinguely in Basel through November 2nd. Titled “Midnight Zone,” this major new solo show focuses on water and the complex networks of life that it sustains. The exhibition opened during Art Basel, where Charrière’s work was on view at multiple booths—indicating an artist at the top of his game.
Charrière grew up in Switzerland, “surrounded by mountains, lakes, glaciers, and rivers,” he said. But it was diving that helped the artist himself change his outlook. The disorienting experience of being underwater “really helped me to recalibrate or rethink my relation with my surroundings at the surface,” he said. The craziest dive he’s done, he said, was in the middle of the Pacific. He dove to 35 meters, where he “completely lost the sense of scale or any kind of perceptional reference point.” It was a life-altering experience.
A similar recalibration happens to visitors in the Museum Tinguely show. Many rooms are shrouded in darkness, the dimmed lights evoking the mystery of the deep sea. A brand new work, Albedo (2025), features a nearly hour-long underwater video shot from beneath icebergs in the Arctic Ocean with the camera pointing upwards. The work is projected onto the ceiling, meaning viewers must lie down to see the shimmering halos of blue-tinged sunlight refract through the water. The score consists of vocalizations from orcas, sperm whales, and humpback whales that echo throughout the space, creating an eerie environment. It’s a topsy-turvy installation that immediately sets the stage: While the subaquatic usually feels distant, mysterious, or even scary, here, it becomes immediate and enveloping.
Several of the works on view engage with climate change and other forms of environmental devastation. Spiral Economy (2025) consists of a ready-made vending machine filled with ammonite fossils. The machine’s metal corkscrews echo the coiled shape of the shells left behind by this now-extinct species. This work critically explores how humans have extracted the riches of our planet for commercial use. “There’s this illusion of infinite resources. At the same time, we also turn everything we touch into a commodity,” Charrière said during a tour of the show.
The artist has long taken a pointed approach in his work. One of the oldest works on view, the photo series “The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories” (2013), documents the artist’s travels to Iceland, where he clambered aboard a gigantic, sculptural iceberg island with a gas-powered torch. The images show the artist, a tiny, black figure, trying in vain to melt these massive ice blocks. An absurd gesture when attempted by a single person, it nonetheless evokes the irreversible damage that we inflict through human-caused climate change.
While such works respond to contemporary crises, the artist also noted the influence of Romanticism, the 19th-century movement that emphasized the sublime power of nature. The anonymized human silhouette in “The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories” evokes the reverent stance of the subject of Caspar David Friedrich’s Romantic masterpiece Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (ca. 1818). But in contrast to Friedrich’s quietly observant figure, Charrière’s contemporary wanderer is depicted violently but fruitlessly attempting to assert control over the wild natural elements.
Charrière’s focus on the environment takes a more meditative tone in more recent works that involve large-scale interventions deep under the sea. The show takes its title from a major new commission, The Midnight Zone (2024). Unlike the twilight zone, the lowest level of the ocean that light can reach, the midnight zone gets no light at all, creating an extreme ecosystem unlike many others on Earth. Extending to depths of 4,000 meters, it’s a habitat populated by strange sea life that scientists still know very little about. For this hour-long 4K video work, Charrière dropped a rotating Fresnel lens (the type used in lighthouses) into the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, which lies in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico. The camera captures animals rarely seen by humans, from bioluminescent anglerfish to giant sixgill sharks, slowly circling the light.
As Charrière explained, the abundant biodiversity here is currently threatened by the mining industry: It’s one of the most mineral-rich deep-sea regions of Earth, laden with the cobalt, nickel, and manganese needed to make batteries. But Charrière hopes that his works will help viewers connect with the mysteries of the deep sea and recognize the value of these lifeforms—not just the natural resources found in their habitat. He aims to stir feelings similar to what he experiences while diving: “This boundary between inside and outside, between your individuality and the world which surrounds you, becomes blurred,” he said.
In another new work, Black Smoker (2025), this immersion goes even further. Upon entering the darkest room of the show, visitors remove their shoes and lay on the floor, which rumbles and reverberates. This sensory experience is created by audio recordings of the Earth’s geological movements, sourced from seismic and deep-sea monitoring sites that capture the hissing, gurgling sounds of the planet’s release valves. “I’m drawn to these places where the planet speaks in his own voice,” said Charrière.
These sounds can be disconcerting, a reminder of how insignificant humans are on a planet that predates us by billions of years. Yet, Charrière hopes to help his audience channel this sense of awe into reverence, rather than fear. Here, submerged in these floating, fragile underwater ecosystems, we have a chance to see things differently.
from Artsy News https://ift.tt/GmRB03C
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