Galerie Anhava: Jacob Dahlgren

The centerpiece in Swedish artist Jacob Dahlgren’s latest exhibition is “Subject of Art,” 2012, a series of fifteen Art is born out of art, Dahlgren seems to say, but his current show also reminds us that his works are born out of work. These pieces play with references to art’s recent past, while the even more recent process of their making is also visible—for instance, we can imagine the hundreds of hours Dahlgren must have spent sharpening pencils. In a further nod to the Constructivist tradition, nearly every object here was originally a tool traditionally used for measuring or manipulating materials small, building block–like wall reliefs, each made out of hundreds of yellow pencils. Dahlgren has systematically sharpened the pencils to different lengths and combined them on a wall, tips facing out, to create a variety of optical patterns. Other works are made out of handsaws, rulers, tape measures, and mass-produced doors painted in flat colors to look like Minimalist paintings.

Dahlgren blends recognizable features of modernist abstraction, from Kenneth Noland’s bands and stripes to Brice Marden’s monochromes, with everyday manufactured objects. He has previously used individual gatherings of dartboards, plastic coffee cups, and coat hangers to form geometric patterns. Here, remnants of modernist utopian ideals seem to shake hands with the art history–conscious Pop-Conceptualism of today.