Julian Charrière
Vertigo
2021

Onyx, motor, lamp, soundtrack
170 x 140 x 85 cm
Unique

Vertigo is a drilled onyx boulder, from which the core sample, extruded from its former shape is hanging above it, as the positive matter ascending from its negative. Once again perforated by elongated slits the core spins beaming blinding rays of light in the room’s haze-filled interior. The smoke emanates from the sculptures’ base, located at the center of a circular carpeted platform, where the visitors reclining can rest their heads on hard pillows made of smoothly carved coal.
The revolving semi-transparent mineral is a remake of Brion Gysin’s historical dream machine device, adapted to our twenty- first-century crisis. The blasting and hypnotising light penetrate the closed eyelids in a sort of group meditation pursuing enlightenment while the coal leaves black marks around our necks – meditational bruises. In the background, a soundtrack based on field recordings of two volcano’s activities plays, one in Iceland (Geldingaladir) and one in Ethiopia (Erta Ale). These two geological giants dialogue in this obscure and hermetic language humans cannot understand is a symbol of a globalised geological world, beyond our civilisa-tion. The meditative state as a dialogue with the minerals still provides some hindrances to apprehend and comprehend.