Julius von Bismarck

Julius von Bismarck
Normale Katastrophe (Normality Bias)

Press conference: Tuesday, 09.09.2025, 10:00

Register here for the press conference.

Press release, short version

He lashes the sea with a whip, captures lightning bolts or paints over whole landscapes: in spectacular actions Julius von Bismarck explores the relationship between we humans and what we call “nature”. How do we deal with a situation in which disasters are the new normal? In his first large institutional solo exhibition in Austria, to be held in the KunstHausWien, a museum of the Wien Holding, the artist considers human power and powerlessness in the face of climate change.

Responding to the “normality bias ”: with works created in the middle of natural forces, the exhibition addresses human hubris, responsibility and agency. We are challenged to change our perspective and critically reassess the possibilities and consequences our actions have on the environment. By inviting the renowned artist Julius von Bismarck, the KunstHausWien is once again drawing on the power of art to meet the enormous challenge of sharpening awareness for complex relationships and counter the looming threat of ecological collapse.

The leitmotif of the exhibition: engaging with the forces of nature

Whether wildfires, lightning strikes or huge storm waves and swells – the leitmotif of the exhibition is the engagement with the natural forces of fire and water in a living environment we humans are increasingly changing. The title Normale Katastrophe (Normality Bias) describes the state of a society continuously stricken by multiple crises, with far-reaching and unprecedented ecological and social changes becoming the new normality. In powerful images facilitated by technological inventions and radical experimental settings, the artist scrutinises human perception. The resulting photographs, video works, sculptures and installations are visually stunning and do not shy away from grand gestures. Along with a selection of cross-media works from the last fifteen years, a series of new photographic works will be on show. Julius von Bismarck has also created a site-specific intervention for the KunstHausWien’s greened inner courtyard.

Artistic approach and works

Julius von Bismarck’s artistic research is oriented on action, with his works often emerging out of direct, physical engagement with the forces of nature. For Talking to Thunder (2016–2017) – one of the two central work complexes featured in the exhibition – the artist followed lightning storms to investigate the phenomenon in minute detail. This pursuit led him to research labs in the US, a remote part of Venezuela renowned for its frequent severe electrical storms and shamans in Colombia. He even developed a special device to capture lightning bolts and channel them to the ground – powerful photographs and an installation tell of these encounters and experiments.

The second central work complex, Fire with Fire (2018–2020), and a series of new photographic works, created in early 2025 in the aftermath of the devastating Los Angeles fires, revolve around the element of fire as both a destructive and a regenerative force. The works contradict the familiar aesthetics of disasters as they are represented in media reports: through slow motion, image mirroring and thoughtful composition, hypnotic images emerge capturing and conveying the duality of fire – on the one hand a destructive elementary power, on the other a tool to dominate nature and the engine driving human ecological power.

For Punishment (2011–2012) the artist lashes symbolically-charged landscapes in acts at once brutal and meditative. In the work exhibited in the KunstHausWien he futilely fights the roaring sea until exhaustion. Here Julius von Bismarck is referring to the anecdote about the Persian king Xerxes, who sought to punish the sea by whipping it, and reflects the notion that nature can be influenced or indeed controlled.

The natural force of the sea is also the theme of the video work Den Himmel muss man sich wegdenken (2014). Presented in a large projection, a giant wave swells and rises during a storm, resembling a monochrome massif. At first barely perceptible, it rolls towards the viewer in extreme slow-motion, generating a feeling that is equally meditative and threatening. Filmed with a highspeed camera in the middle of a storm off the coast of Ireland, the work starkly evokes the sense of human powerlessness when faced with the forces of nature.

For the photographs of Landscape Painting (Bismarck Sea, Volcano) (2023) Julius von Bismarck let a large cloth imprinted with a rippling wave structure drift across the Bismarck Sea. The resulting photographic work shows the landscape overlaid with an image of itself, reflecting how (colonial) pictorial traditions continue to determine our perception of the world and landscapes.

The works assembled in the exhibition deal with traditional images and narratives about nature: nature as a romanticised idyll, as an economic resource or as a vengeful, almost divine authority. Julius von Bismarck counters these ideas with new images, disconcertingly beautiful and contemplative in character – with the result that they almost make us forget the enormous power of nature and the immense physical commitment required to produce them. They enable us to sense and discern the extent to which our perception of nature is culturally moulded. As the artist has put it: “In my view, what we think about nature or how we understand nature is strongly informed by images – when nature is represented in an image it’s called a landscape. I try to destroy the old, conventionalised images and create new ones.”

Julius von Bismarck’s artistic research is not looking for explanations but rather experiences. With experimental openness he creates visual spaces which reveal the limits of our inherited traditional ways of seeing and initiate new perspectives on the relationship between humans and the environment.

Curator

Sophie Halsinger

Biography

Julius von Bismarck was born in 1983 in Breisach am Rhein (Germany) and grew up in Riad (Saudi Arabia) and Berlin. He lives and works in Berlin and Switzerland. He studied at the University of the Arts, Berlin, the Hunter College New York (USA) and the Institute for Spatial Experiments founded by Ólafur Elíasson in Berlin. The artist has already developed numerous solo exhibitions, for example at the Berlinische Galerie (2023), the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn (2020) and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2019).

He has also taken part in diverse international group exhibitions and biennales, including Abenteuer Abstraktion in the Sprengel Museum Hannover (2023), the Mercosul Biennale in Porto Alegre, Brazil (2022), STUDIO BERLIN in the Berghain, Berlin (2020), Power to the People in the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2018), the first Antarctica Biennale (2017) and the Architecture Biennale Venice (2012). In 2008 he was awarded the Prix Ars Electronica, while in 2012 he was the first artist-in-residence at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, in Geneva.

Opening

Opening
Tuesday, 9. Sept. 2025, 19:00

Artist Talk
Tuesday, 9. Sept. 2025, 18:00

Exhibition programme

Public tours: Normale Katastrophe (Normality Bias)
Every 2nd Sunday of the month, 11:00-12:00

Sun 14.09.2025
Sun 12.10.2025
Sun 09.11.2025
Sun 14.12.2025, ÖGS is providing interpreting services
Sun 11.01.2026
Sun 08.02.2026
Sun 08.03.2026

Artist Talk

Julius von Bismarck in conversation with curator Sophie Haslinger
Tue 09.09.2025, 18:00 – 19:00

Curators’ Tours

With Sophie Haslinger
Mon 13.10.2025, 17:00 – 18:00
Thu 05.03.2026, 17:00 – 18:00

Future Talk: Climate x Change

Who makes the weather?
Wed 05.11.2025, 18:00 – 19:30

Excursion: Hohe Warte weather station

Fri 21.11.2025, 14:00 – 16:00
In cooperation with GeoSphere Austria

Tour: In dialogue

With cultural anthropologist Greca Meloni
Wed 14.01.2026, 18:00 – 19:30

Workshop: Science Lab - Fire and lightning

With Science Pool
Sat 21.02.2026, 14:00 – 16:00

DIY-Station: Fiery spirits

Sat 28.02.2026, 13:00 – 16:00
From 6 years

PRESS IMAGES Portrait Julius von Bismarck

PRESS IMAGES Normale Katastrophe (Normality Bias)