SELECTED WORKS BY Bjorn Dahlem
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Bjorn Dahlem
The Milky Way
2007
Wood, neon lamp, bottle of milk
Dimensions variable |
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Bjorn Dahlem
Homunculus Samurai (Sinn Ninja)
2006
Mixed media
180 x 60 x 60 cm |
 
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Bjorn Dahlem
Schwarzes Loch (M-Sphären) (and 4 details)
2007
Wood, lamps, light bulbs and neon lamps
540 x 730 x 360 cm |
 
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Bjorn Dahlem
Cathedral
2008
Wood, lightbulbs, glacier cherries, red wine, varnish
191 x 60 x 60 cms |
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ARTIST INFORMATION
ARTICLES
Bjorn Dahlem at Friedrich Petzel - New York … the artist uses low-grade materials to great effect
Berlin-based conceptualist Bjorn Dahlem made his New York solo debut with "Coma Sculptor," a room-size installation and five smaller sculptures that are a continuation of the young artist's fascination with cosmology. In the open-ended and experimental traditions of artists such as Duchamp and Beuys, Dahlem makes adept use of materials and linguistic puns. The "coma" in the exhibition's title has a double meaning that plays on both the common Greek root (as being in a comatose state or deep sleep) and the less common usage of the word "coma" (the nebulous cloud that forms the head of a comet), a term that comes from astronomy.
Dahlem's intelligently conceived science-fiction universe has a whimsical charm that is both playful and smart. The installation Coma Sculptor contained an oversized, architectonic construction suspended from the ceiling. Fashioned of scrap plywood, duct tape and metal screws, with wires lining its skeletonlike veins, the idiosyncratic sculpture's oblong orbital paths extended out into the gallery, forcing viewers to carefully navigate the space. An eclectic assortment of lit and unlit lightbulbs and fluorescent tubes dotted its edges.
Forming the nucleus of Coma Sculptor was a silver pyramidal frame; jutting up from the ground into the middle of the pyramid was a metal stand on which rested a Plexiglas armature holding aloft a water-filled jar. Suspended in the jar was a small sausage that, according to the artist, symbolized the kid that gets picked on in school. Even without this explicit reference, the tiny frankfurter strikingly alluded to the pathetic fragility of human life dwarfed by the cosmos swirling around it.
Read the entire article here Source: artinamericamagazine.com
Bjorn Dahlem
Last year the Hubble Space Telescope took a long, hard, deep look at what appears to be a nearly empty spot inthe night sky near the constellation Fornax.
This research, for a project called Ultra Deep Field, produced images of galaxies that existed around 400 million years after the Big Bang � the oldest and most remote objects ever recorded. In an attempt to make the technique used for this mind-boggling cosmic exploration easier to grasp, the friendly NASA website explains: �looking into the Ultra Deep Field is like peering through an eight-foot-long soda straw.�
At Bj�rn Dahlem�s recent exhibition �Uto-pia Planitia II� at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin visitors were confronted with this eye-crossing impossibility. Dahlem�s Utopia Planitia � Hubble 2 (2004) housed a long black straw suspended in the middle of a rectangular construction of crudely screwed-together lengths of pine, shrouded by bead curtains (a nod in the direction of String Theory), surrounded by bottled camomile tea (which could easily have been mistaken for urine samples) and set against a background of fluorescent lights.
Dahlem�s sculpture and installations are full of references to fascinating and bewildering cosmic trivia, space exploration and theories about the make-up and origins of the universe, such as the magical and majestic M Theory. His work often looks as if it has leapt straight from the idiosyncratic drawing board of a space-obsessed draughtsman or amateur inventor. But none of his model works is true to scale or functional in any way, or even illustrative of his favourite sources of inspiration � cosmology, astronomy and their cultural reflection in film. It would be hard, for instance, to imagine scientists in the future trying to unravel his works, as has been done with Leonardo da Vinci�s technical drawings: his dodgy-looking Raumschiff I (Spaceship I, 1998) is not intended ever to fly. Rather, Dahlem assimilates information, anecdotes, trivia and observations from the scientific world as if his practice were a black hole that sucks everything in and where the laws of physics seem not to apply.
Read the entire article here
Source: frieze.com
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Other artists in GERMANIA:NEW ART FROM GERMANY
Gert & Uwe Tobias | Markus Amm | Dirk Bell | Felix Gmelin | Ulrich Lamsfuss | Andrea Lehmann | Jonathan Meese | Kirstine Roepstorff | Julian Rosefeldt
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