Julius von Bismarck

Julius von Bismarck’s (b.1983) multidisciplinary practice explores contemporary dialectics of nature and civilisation, knowledge and cultural imagination, individuals’ behaviour and social norms. His visual vocabulary widely transposes encounters with elemental forces that exceed human perception and reason. Employing a diverse range of mediums including photography, film, installation, sculpture, performance, and landscape, each of his works is shaped by research-driven experimentations with crossovers in the fields of physics, technology, and social sciences.

Julius von Bismarck was the winner of the first edition of the Collide Award in 2012, becoming the first artist in residence in the Laboratory. Drawing from his residency at CERN and apprenticeship at the Berlin Institute for Spatial Experiments directed by Olafur Eliasson (2013), von Bismarck’s work freely moves between science and invention, recurrently intertwining references to literature, history, film, and philosophies concerned with concepts of reality vs. perception, or nature vs. culture. Decontextualising, manipulating, ironising, and reconstructing reality in diverse modes ranging from objets trouvés found in his everyday surroundings to in situ installations in remote places, von Bismarck’s oeuvre reminds us of man’s vain relationship with his environment.

Julius von Bismarck has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at international museums and institutions including Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2019), Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (2020), and Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg (2017). His work has also been shown at K11 Art Foundation, Shanghai (2019), Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2018), the 57th and 58th Venice Biennale (2017; 2019), MOKAK Museum of Contemporary Art, Kraków (2019), Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato (2016) and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2015), amongst others. Von Bismarck is represented by the galleries Sies + Höke (Düsseldorf) and alexander levy (Berlin). He lives and works in Berlin.