Bjorn Dahlem at Friedrich Petzel - New York … the artist uses low-grade materials to great effect

Berlin-based conceptualist Bjorn Dahlem made his novel York solo debut with "Coma Sculptor," a room-size installation and five smaller statuarys that are a continuation of the young artist's fascination with cosmology In the open-end and experimental traditions of artists of the like kind as Duchamp and Beuys, Dahlem makes adept use of materials and linguistic witticisms The "coma" in the exhibition's title has a double meaning that plays upon both the common Greek base (as being in a comatose state or of great depth sleep) and the less belonging to all usage of the word "coma" (the nebulous mist that forms the head of a comet) a terminus that comes from astronomy.

Dahlem's intelligently conceived science-fiction universe has a whimsical charm that is the couple playful and smart. The installation Coma Sculptor contained an oversized, architectonic construction suspended from the ceiling. Fashioned of scrap plywood conduit tape and metal screws, with wires lining its skeletonlike veins, the idiosyncratic sculpture's oblong orbital paths reach outed 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 sod into the middle of the pyramid was a metal stand upon 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 acquires picked on in school. plane without this explicit reference, the tiny frankfurter strikingly alluded to the pathetic fragility of human life dwarfed by dint of the cosmos swirling around it.

Resting upon the gallery floor was a large circular carpet with concentric rings of mut earth tones. In addition to redoubling the artist's cosmological theme, the carpet was intended as a sort of psychedelic recline area where visitors could chill and contemplate the expansive super-cluster. Looming above the sculpture on a nearby wall were gigantic, white alphabetic characters that spelled "COMA." Made of Styrofoam, the alphabetic characters conveyed a delicacy despite their commanding presence

Dahlem's disarmingly earnest use of low-grade materials endowed the exhibition with the rough-hewn charm of guileless adolescent tinkering. Despite the work's jerry-built appearance, it exud an internal order that is the couple erudite and sophisticated.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group