Veins, 2026

Veins is a communion of massive uncarved blocks of white marble. The vertical stones may summon thoughts of prehistoric menhirs and Neolithic architectures, yet their surfaces are marked by the industrial contemporary. Iron wedges—tools traditionally used to split rock—pierce the raw volumes, corroding their bodies to weep rust, which traces faint ochre veins across the pale mineral. The stains evoke both injury and extraction, gesturing toward the violence embedded in processes of rendering natural materials into an anthropogenic resource. 

Unlike the classical white marble figures lauded as masterpieces in the Western canon of art, these works are not carved into a human shape. Instead, they hold their own chemical geometry, resisting resolution. Where Michelangelo claimed the artist liberates a sculpture from the mountain, Veins reverses the gesture: insisting that the stone itself is already a figure, complete in its silence and the owner of its own form.

All works by Julian Charrière. Images: ©The Artist / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.