October 2- 8, 2003

art

The Art of Physics

Charles Fahlen, Out of the Blue (2002), 40 by 48 3/4 by 3 inches, stainless steel bead chain, epoxy, pigment.

Charles Fahlen’s sculptures try to make sense of the cosmos.

by Susan Hagen

One of the biggest shortcomings of the modern world is the lack of visual images that express and give definition to our current understanding of the cosmos. (By contrast, the pre-Newtonian earth surrounded by celestial spheres was as easy to visually demonstrate as a set of Russian nesting dolls!) Charles Fahlen seems to be pondering this problem in a group of zippy formalist sculptures made of colorful balls and large-scale hardware that is now on display at Locks Gallery.

Fahlen, who taught from 1967 to 2000 at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia and since then has resided in Northern California, has always had active and wide-ranging interests as a sculptor. Children's construction toys, the American landscape and trash are just a few of the many sources of inspiration for his work. He has always worked on several distinct bodies of work concurrently -- among them prints, indoor wall and floor sculptures, large-scale outdoor sculptures and site-specific works with environmental concerns -- and the eight sculptures in the show represent a single formal inquiry that Fahlen has pursued intermittently from 1989 to 2003. They're inspired by ideas in contemporary astronomy and physics -- expressed through formalist studies in a terse language of everyday objects and materials. Many of the sculptures remind me of the demonstrations of physics principles using multicolored Super Balls, tennis balls and other toys and paraphernalia given by Mr. Pagel, my favorite high school teacher.

Chiron (1994), a wall sculpture made of half-inch stainless steel rods welded end-to-end into a continuous looping structure, is named for a large comet discovered in 1977. The metal frame is about 6 feet wide and 3 feet tall and is strung with oversize lathe-turned wooden beads that have been painted or stained in bright, rich colors. The metal loops arch gracefully, but with the mechanic precision and tidiness of atomic particles. Also built on a stationary metal structure, Voyager (1989) was formed out of an undulating oval mesh of half-inch steel rods that have been pristinely welded and buffed. In the concave center of the structure a large black wooden ball is nestled, as if to explain the relationship between matter and energy in a simplified visual form. Another piece, Hullabaloo (1989), is made of precisely placed colored wooden balls, with a ring of metal hanging on each one like an oversize nonfunctional drawer pull, and is installed on a huge expanse of white wall. This piece could function as a flamboyant geometry lesson, illustrating the placement of points on the coordinate plane, but it also suggests a display of newly discovered particles or planets.

In the later pieces, Fahlen continues the astrophysics theme without the rigid framework of the early pieces. Unexplained Mysteries (2003) is a roughly rectangular net made of stainless steel chain hung with brightly striped epoxy balls, like a cast of characters from quantum mechanics. Out of the Blue (2002) is even more loosely structured, consisting of a long looping stainless steel bead chain hung from six points on the wall. Each downward loop of the chain is strung with a cast resin epoxy ball, uniquely colored and striped and textured, which pulls it lower and straighter -- like a down-to-earth demonstration of the complicated new physics theories of supersymmetry and string theory. These sculptures are both about affiliations and contingencies; their malleable formal structures organize a set of components that are always connected and move or remain stationary in relation to each other. Fahlen seems to be wryly suggesting that the notion of relativity is the only definite thing in the universe we live in.

While our current scientific understanding of the universe is so complex that a single visual image could never give the whole picture, it's encouraging to see a determined artist like Chuck Fahlen succeed so well in giving visual representation to so many fascinating ideas about the physical components and forces in the universe.

CHARLES FAHLEN: UNEXPLAINED MYSTERIES

Through Oct. 11, Locks Gallery, 600 Washington Square South, 215-629-1000

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