Exhibition: Solarstalgia, ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Ishøj, 2025

Solarstalgia
ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Ishøj, Denmark, 2025

28 November 2024 – 21 April 2025
Curated by Jenny Lund

Solarstalgia takes visitors on an immersive journey through our material history, exploring how planetary life, industrial modernity, and our future are all intrinsically linked. The exhibition brings together a series of evocative multimedia installations that delve into organic life forms that have shaped the very conditions for life on Earth. From Carboniferous swamplands to palm oil plantations and the fossilized sunshine of coal itself, these works question our unbalanced relationship with the planet and its plant life, whose existence long precedes our own.

The installation Panchronic Garden (2022) recreates a Carboniferous forest, bringing ancient plants to life on a floor of anthracite coal. The film Controlled Burn (2022) builds on this theme, contrasting explosive pyrotechnics with images of derelict oil rigs and decommissioned cooling towers, showing how this journey began with the very plants in Panchronic Garden. The work A Stone Dream of You (2024) brings this meditation back to the origins of life itself, with lava stone sculptures that evoke the primordial beginnings of life emerging from geological forces.

The title Solarstalgia speaks to the philosophical concept of solastalgia, which describes an existential longing that arises when we experience environmental changes in places where we feel at home. Through this body of work, a dialogue is created between the distant past and our collective present.

All works by Julian Charrière. All images are © The artist / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photos by Anders Sune Berg.