BJÖRN DAHLEM
Opening: 17/01/2008 7pm
Exhibition: 18/01/2008 – 01/03/2008


Press release

The focus of Björn Dahlem`s work lies in cosmology and cosmological models. Natural science, philosophy, religion, psychology and alchemy serve as vehicles of perception and spiritual landscape for his art. The distant and seemingly eternal objects of the universe meet earthly matter. With mostly simple materials like wood, styrofoam, and various light sources and found objects, Dahlem creates sculptures which he calls "soul landscapes" or "mental habitats." His works have the character of a personal alchemical laboratory that merges nature and imagination with phantasmagorical figures and daring designs.

In his new work "Deuterium Stadl (The Dark Side)", the visitor enters Dahlem’s artistic cosmos in a simple farm shed that proves to be a Freudian storage unit of associative dream sequences: a man escapes with a white suitcase through an entanglement of corridors, an egg disappears in a black hole, a strange man dressed in black is doing Solitaire with playing cards, out of the dark appears a house with two identical doors, spruce tops sway in the night sky. The images lighten up on several monitors in the twilight of the wooden hut and deliver insight into a cryptic stream of the unconscious.

Björn Dahlem (*1974 in Munich/Germany), lives and works in Berlin.

Selected solo exhibitions: Bregenzer Kunsterverein (2007); Gallery Guido W. Baudach (2007; Hiromii Yoshii Gallery, Tokyo (2005); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2004); UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2004); FRAC Paca, Marseille (2004); Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York (2003).

For further information about the exhibition please contact Kerstin Engholm,
T +43 1 585 73 37.