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Artist Profile
Julius von Bismarck
b. 1983
Julius von Bismarck, born 1983 in Breisach am Rhein, Germany, grew up in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He currently lives and works in Berlin and in Switzerland.
The artist studied at the Berlin University of the Arts (2005-2013) and the Hunter College, New York (2007). Julius von Bismarck received the Award of the Shifting Foundation, Beverly Hills (2018); IBB Photography Award, IBB Atrium, Berllin (2013); and Prix Ars Electronica Award, Linz (2009), among others.
Spanning a wide range of forms—from kinetic sculptures and photographs to video installations and landscapes—Julius von Bismarck's work is produced in an intense engagement with the world and the physical conditions that determine existence on the planet. His work treats the natural world as a laboratory, a studio or sometimes even as a kind of canvas. Employing optical illusion, elaborate tromp l'oeil or incongruous action, his works can confound viewers, allowing them to experience the world and their place in it from a reoriented perspective. At the core of his practice is the question of how the notion of Nature was constructed: specifically, how the conceptual split stipulated by man from his surroundings, through naming, classifying and creating systems, has gone hand in hand with control and domination of the environment, to increasingly disastrous effects, not just for nature itself but as a consequence of wider notions of humanity’s sovereignty, also for the lives of other beings, human and non-human.
Ambitious and expansive, von Bismarck's projects are rooted in extensive research and experimentation to invent entirely new technological apparatuses that articulate and give form to his ideas. At times grandiose or granular, the works beguile with their originality of thought and execution. Playing on danger—real and implied existential risks for the artist, or his team, for example, by triggering lightning with small rockets, or for the audience who are placed near slowly collapsing sculptures or confronted with what appear to be large quantities of precariously suspended explosives—von Bismarck’s projects reveal an explorer's adventurousness, tempered by a scientific approach and the artist‘s profound self-awareness of his engagement with the operations of a flawed Enlightenment that his work seeks to critique.
Julius von Bismarck’s recent solo exhibitions and commissions include: When Platitudes Become Form, Berlinische Galerie. Museum für Moderne Kunst, Berlin (2023); Neustadt (with Marta Dyachenko), Emscherkunstweg, Duisburg (2021); Feuer mit Feuer, Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (2020); Art Club #28, Villa Médici – Académie de France à Rome, Rome (2019); Baumanalyse, Haus Mödrath – Räume für Kunst, Kerpen (2019); Die Mimik der Tethys, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2019); I’m afraid I must ask you to leave (with Julian Charrière), Kunstpalais Erlangen, Erlangen (2018); Gewaltenteilung, Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg (2017); Objects in mirror might be closer than they appear (with Julian Charrière), Villa Bernasconi, Geneva (2016); Fade Into You – A Series of Film Screenings, Kunsthalle Mainz, Mainz (2016); Tiere sind dumm und Pflanzen noch viel dümmer, Kunstverein Göttingen, Göttingen (2015); History Apparatus, Kunstverein Arnsberg, Arnsberg (2014).
Selected recent group exhibitions include: The Bright Side of the Desert Moon, Noor Riyadh Festival, Riyadh (2023); Mexichrome. Fotografía y color en México, Museo del palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City (2023); Julius von Bismarck, La Pista 500, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin (2023); The Adventure of Abstraction, Sprengel Museum, Hanover (2023); Forest Through the Trees, Adam Aronson Fine Arts Center, St. Louis (2022); Breathing Water, Drinking Air, Philara Collection, Düsseldorf (2022); Chronicles of Disappearance, Mönchehaus – Museum für modern Kunst, Goslar (2022); When the Wind Blows, Kunst Haus Wien, Vienna (2022); Parallel Worlds. Art, Science & Fiction, Kunstmuseum Celle, Celle (2020); Studio Berlin, Berghain, Berlin (2020); Als wir verschwanden. Vier Videoarbeiten, Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur (2020); Just a bowl of cherries, 7th Thessaloniki Biennale, Experimental Center for the Arts, Thessaloniki (2019); Nowness Experiments: The Mesh (with Julian Charrière), K11 Foundation, Shanghai (2019); Maske – Kunst der Verwandlung, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn (2019); Nature in Art, MOCAK – Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Krakow (2019); Ré-flexions. Autour des nouvelles expositions, FRAC Alsace, Sélestat (2019); Days without a Night, Goethe Institut New Delhi, New Delhi (2018); Impact, Kunst- und Gewerbeverein Regensburg, Regensburg (2018); Past-Water, Museo Nazionale della Montagna, CAI Torino, Turin (2018); and Power to the People, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt am Main (2018).
His work is held in the collections of various institutions including: Arken Museum, Ishøj; FRAC Alsace, Sélestat; Fundación Televisa, Mexico City; Kunsthalle Hamburg; Musac – Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León; Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf; Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn; Sprengel Museum Hannover, Hanover; and Stadtgalerie Wolfsburg.
Portrait: Julius von Bismarck. Photo © Daniel Müller for Friends of Friends