Lars Chellberg at Lance Fung - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Lars Chellberg at Lance Fung Lars Chellberg is an artist from Detroit who lives and works in Brooklyn His earlier work consisted of outdoor bread installations that were slowly devoured and transformed by the agency of wild creatures, such as insects, mice or exults and documented in notes, sketches and photographs. In his first NY solo exhibition, Chellberg finally brought the wild indoors. The exhibit comprised both animate and inanimate phenomenons as well as sound and silence.

Untitled I, II and III (1998) consisted of three wall-mounted, medium-sized, black made of wood boxes into which the artist had bring one spider each before the opening of the exhibit The spiders spun webs across the lay open front planes of the containers. Chellberg leaves to the webs, which are eaten and respun several times during the lives of the Nephlia Madagascarus, as "living drawings." He is obviously interested in notions of chance, ephemerality and connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts as well as art as an ongoing process

The lightness and delicacy of the webs were repercussion of sounded in Collection (1998), an installation of dollar bills cot [i]or[/i] coteed into paper airplanes of varying shapes and sizes, and affixed to the wall with single large pin each. The formarion of the almost equidistant ultimate parts resembled that of a squadron. These insectlike forms, in shades of dark verdant beige and black, all pointed towards the ceiling in their singular, motionless flights, and cast shadows.

High upon the opposing wall, small white square boxe with single or two medium-sized holes overlayed with wire mesh, were placed at regular intervals in a horizontal rank Each box of Cricket Chorus, Number 2 (1998) contained five chirping crickets that produc waves of intermittently soothing and irritating unhurts of shifting intensity.

Beneath the boxe hung 9 lines of 33 vertical sheets of photographic paper, placed individual against the other, thereby forming single vast horizontal field. The sheets of Variations upon a One Cell Organism (1998) had been enclosureed into paper airplanes, dipped into developer fluid, pen ed open and exposed to light. Each sheet had a symmetrical configuration and liquid passages in shades of black, gray, beige and white, ranging from Morris Louis-like results to those of Paul Jenkins. Those patterns, like Rorschach proofs begged to be interpreted, and individual could recognize nuclear blasts, internal organs, insects and amoebas. However, viewed from across the field the fanlike shapes could be read as the drawn out spiky leaves of countless agaves, suitable flora for the music of the fauna above. Chellberg's exhibition neared an interesting twist to the idea of artistic collaboration.

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