German artist Julius von Bismarck is making waves in Vienna with his first major solo exhibition in Austria, titled "Normal Catastrophe," now on display at Kunst Haus Wien. Known for capturing lightning strikes and chasing storms, von Bismarck presents a unique perspective on the relationship between humans and nature through his extraordinary artistic interventions.
Gerlinde Riedl, Director of Kunst Haus Wien, describes von Bismarck's work as presenting nature not as a romantic destination of longing, but as an independent actor - neither victim nor enemy, but rather powerful and uncontrollable. The artist, who grew up in Saudi Arabia and currently lives in Berlin, is characterized by Riedl as an extraordinary artist who is also a poet, researcher, and provocateur. His works are based on combining visual arts with research and experimentation, driven by what he simply describes as curiosity.
The exhibition's centerpiece work, "Talking to Thunder," emerged after von Bismarck was struck by lightning and wanted to get close to lightning once again. In the first room, rockets are displayed that von Bismarck and his team used to attract lightning strikes. "If you're lucky, you can trigger a lightning strike with them and photograph it," von Bismarck explained during a tour of the exhibition. Unlike scientific work, his action, which was preceded by years of research, was not about presenting numbers but about conveying emotions.
Von Bismarck achieves this impressively with his large-format hung images that capture powerful lightning strikes illuminating the sky over palm landscapes. The art world knows and loves him for his often extreme artistic interventions that break the boundaries of human perception and question the relationships between humans and nature, and between art and science. He is considered one of the most exciting German contemporary artists.
The exhibition, provocatively titled "Normal Catastrophe," aims to address human hubris, responsibility, and agency amid natural forces. Despite all the seriousness, von Bismarck doesn't miss adding a shot of humor. For his work series "Punishment," he was inspired by the Persian King Xerxes, who had the sea punished with 300 lashes after a bridge collapse. "That was very intense," the artist described those scenes running on a large screen in the Kunst Haus, in which he whips a stormy sea. "I really had to develop a kind of anger. It was filmed spontaneously in Rio - I had the whip in my luggage."
The video work "You Have to Think Away the Sky" also deals with water. In the expansive projection, a storm wave towers like a monochrome mountain range, shot during a storm off Ireland. Only a single skipper had agreed to take von Bismarck out to sea in the storm. "I almost wanted to give up," the artist described the situation. But then he managed to film stably in the heavy swells - 1.5 seconds for the projection stretched to eight seconds in extreme slow motion. Von Bismarck recommends taking time for the quiet work, and indeed, when viewing the majestic natural force for longer periods, one falls into a kind of trance.
The second part of the presentation, one floor up, is dedicated to the power of fire. In a photo series shown for the first time, "The Day The Ocean Turned Black" (through ash), von Bismarck documents the consequences of this year's devastating fires in Los Angeles. "I wanted to understand," he said about his intention, aside from disaster tourism. He photographed in a phase when things hadn't been cleaned up yet and the media rush was over, capturing what remained of buildings. The series can be seen as a kind of X-ray view of a city when you remove everything that is flammable.
Parallel to this, wildfire photos from the work "Fire with Fire" are understood as an aesthetic search for fire as something natural. Von Bismarck's works, and specifically "Normal Catastrophe," should not be a call for panic, but for perception, Riedl summarized. The works are often irritatingly beautiful, added curator Sophie Haslinger. This begins already in the green inner courtyard, where the artist has seemingly set a tree on fire in an intervention.
