VIENNA.- He lashes the sea with a whip, captures lightning bolts, or paints over entire landscapes: In spectacular actions Julius von Bismarck explores human perception and the relationship we humans have to what we call “nature”. In his first large institutional solo exhibition in Austria, being presented at KunstHausWien, the artist addresses human hubris, responsibility, and agency in the face of ecological collapse.

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 that we humans are increasingly changing. The exhibition title, 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. Along with a selection of cross-media works from the last fifteen years, a series of new works, created in early 2025 in the aftermath of the devastating Los Angeles fires, are being shown for the first time. Julius von Bismarck has also developed a site-specific intervention for the courtyard of KunstHausWien, creating a dialogical space concerning the state of nature in the built environment.

Driven by a boundless spirit of experimentation, the artist combines scientific curiosity with artistic vision. His artistic research is oriented towards action, with his works often emerging from direct, physical engagement with the forces of nature. For Talking to Thunder (2016–17), for example, the artist followed lightning storms in order to investigate the phenomenon in minute detail. He even developed a special device to capture lightning bolts and channel them to the ground—with powerful photographs and an installation telling of these encounters and experiments. In the video work Punishment #6 (2011), the artist futilely fights the roaring sea until exhaustion—referring to the anecdote about the Persian King Xerxes, who sought to punish the sea by whipping it—and reflects on the notion that nature can be influenced or indeed controlled. His series of new photographic works, The Day the Ocean Turned Black (2025), as well as the site-specific installation Normale Katastrophe (Normality Bias) and the work complex Fire with Fire (2018–20) revolve around the element of fire as a both a destructive and regenerative force.

The works assembled in the exhibition deal with traditional images and narratives of nature and question as a whole the idea of nature as a separate entity, romanticized idyll, economic resource, or vengeful, almost divine authority. The artist counters these ideas with new images that are disconcertingly beautiful and contemplative in character, with the result that they nearly make us forget the tremendous power of natural phenomena—as well as the immense physical commitment required to produce them. They enable us to sense and discern the extent to which our perception of nature is shaped by culture.

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

Julius von Bismarck, who was born in 1983 in Breisach am Rhein and grew up in Riyadh and Berlin, lives and works in Berlin and Switzerland. He studied at the University of the Arts in Berlin, Hunter College in New York (USA), and the Institute for Spatial Experiments founded by Ólafur Elíasson at the University of the Arts, Berlin.

Solo exhibitions, among others: Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2023), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2019).

Group exhibitions and biennales: Abenteuer Abstraktion, Hannover (2023), the Mercosul Biennale, Brazil (2022), STUDIO BERLIN, Berlin (2020), Power to the People, Frankfurt (2018), the first Antarctica Biennale (2017), and the Architecture Biennale Venice (2012).