julian charriere | das schilf

As part of the Berlin Kunstmesse a couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine was commissioned an installation at the Joanna Render Galerie. Credit is due, not only because Charriere is in his first years of art school, but also because he created one of the most interesting pieces I saw all week. Das Schilf is a kind of urban Goldsworthy, but rendered in interactive space. He uses basic materials from road side building sites (paving stones and steel reinforcements) to fill a room with bunches of stone flowers. They seem to have sprouted straight out of the concrete floor, like weeds in a disused courtyard. The gallery, at the corner of a quiet square in Berlin's concrete heart, has become a post apocalyptic greenhouse.

Electric and/or urban gardens are artistically en vogue at the moment, but I think this is a great example not least for its hapticity and elegance. I managed to catch up with the artist to ask him about his work.


Tell me about Das Schilf.

It means the plant, and the field. Materiality was very important. I wanted to take something from the street, something heavy and still, and try to create something organic and animated; something light.

Is it an installation that works only in a room, or can you imagine it outside?

I can easily imagine it outside. I think it would be great to see it in the wind, how it would react.

For me the sense of movement is one of the most successful aspects of the piece. Imagine it by an underground station, every time a train comes by it would go crazy.

Hehe, yes, but I think it’s mainly about people moving through it, and brushing against it. This is where the name comes from; like a field, it traces peoples movements through it.