Björn Dahlem

Born in 1974 in Munich (Germany), he lives in Berlin.

A graduate of the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, this young German sculptor works at close hand with quantum theory, astronomy, and "limit theory". But his interest is not so much the scientific procedure as the mythology of science and the visions that it throws up. He observes the scientific tradition, stretching and challenging the everyday as it pushes even further the boundaries of the visible world. His sculptures, composed of basic construction materials and salvage, express more an aesthetic of contingency, of the subjective or of fragility than any esoterically technological resolution.

Black Hole (1998), his project for one of the great halls at les Abattoirs – Musée Frac Occitanie, is a conglomeration of objects bundled together and suspended in the air. They hang there as if on the verge of being sucked into oblivion, of disappearing into the unseen anomaly of the universe, the black hole, which must eventually absorb us all. To the vertigo suggested by this trapdoor onto the unfathomable depths of the universe, Black Hole adds another: that of the confusion of existence.