The Milky Way

Born in 1974 in Munich, Germany, Björn Dahlem explores the broad concepts of space and matter through installation and sculpture, using physical and cosmological phenomena and scientific models as source material in his direct and often minimalist creations. Executed in 2007, an elegant installation comprised of wood, neon lamps and a bottle of milk, The Milky Way represents our galaxy, in startlingly simple terms. For Dahlem, the material of wood holds a particular attraction: 'wood allows me very immediate access to my ideas, because what I'm trying to do is to stay as close to the idea and the immaterial image of the imagination' (B. Dahlem, quoted on the Saatchi Gallery website, reproduced at https://www.saatchigallery.co.uk/artists/bj36rn_dahlem.htm?section_n ame=shape_of_things). The ubiquity and natural property of the material in some sense mirrors the subjects which he seeks to investigate in his artworks. Presented as a web-like form of light and ordinary matter, The Milky Way makes no pretentions of what it depicts, relying on the immediacy of its form and symbolic attributes (such as the bottle of milk) to convey its meaning. Dahlem calls these creations his 'thought models' or 'mental habitats'. As the artist has explained before: 'when I work on the sculptures I always try to be like a child [thinking, for example,] today I'm going to build the cosmos with orbits of planets' (Ibid.).