"On Balance" an exhibition at Fabrica
For this second exhibition of the Out of the bleu-Woad project, Fabrica presents two artworks of the Sweddish artist Jacob Dahlgren : Heaven is a place on Earth, made of 713 bathroom scales, arranged as a draughtboard on the floor, and The Wonderful World of Abstraction, made of thousand colored ribbons hanged from a grill.
Both artworks are experiential and allow the visitor to experiment an esthetical emotion with some directness, while broaching deep themes. The audience can walk on the scales of Heaven is a place on Earth, and read the numbers appearing on the electronic faces. In allegories, Justice’s attributes are the scale, the Gladius sword and the blindfold, the scale represent the contradictory forces opposing during a lawsuit. The fact that is it balanced shows the equity and impartiality that Justice has to reveal while comparing every arguments. But here, the scales have different standardisations, which echoes back to relative weight of each person in relation to the society today; and maybe to the relativity of justice. This artwork refers also to the famous minimalist sculptor Carl André, and his installations made of slabs of metal or steel placed on the ground.
The Wonderful World of Abstraction is an artwork said to be penetrable, in the line of an artist like Jesus Rafael Soto. The ribbons form a dense gathering of brightly coloured lines, which can be passed through by the visitor, in a total immersion inside the artwork. As the title indicates, the artist invites the visitor to enter the wonderful world of abstraction, experimenting all its dimensions: the visitor can get lost in this artwork, like we can get lost in the contemplation of a painting. A mischievous way to enter the painting both literally and figuratively !
Jacob Dahlgren has been trained as an abstract painter, and then distanced himself from the painting to create abstract forms with other mediums. As we can notice with the bathroom scales installation, abstract forms appears everywhere for whom can see it. Jacob Dahlgren shows how much abstract and geometrical forms are now totally integrated to our modern world. The artist wears everyday a new stripped tee-shirt or jumper, and his collection is now up to more than thousand! Check is Intagram page to see his last photos in Brighton ! http://instagram.com/jacob_dahlgren
