Julien Berthier imagines machines and often absurd situations that he first puts down on paper and then realizes. His work is indeed a whole program which consists of technically viable practical solutions or coherent demonstrations. But the whole, under the guise of improving things or pushing their operating logic, nonetheless constitutes a criticism all the more effective as it borrows from humor and irony. 1) The artist is having fun, but his humor is the most serious comment that we can make on our news.

Transformed into a threatening instrument, Revolution Light, a motorized crystal chandelier in perpetual spinning, keeps any attempt at approach at bay. Julien Berthier here materializes by the choice of the object (the chandelier as a model of bourgeois comfort) as much as by its title, the ironic promise of a light revolution.

(Extract from the text by Sylvie Zavatta, Director of Frac Franche-Comté (1))

Courtesy Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois, Paris