“The Railroader model is the true maker: engineer, architect and master of his own timetable,” reads a statement about it Josh Dihlefeverish exhibition, Cellar arrangement.
Armed with hundreds of miniscule objects from Coral to LEGO, Dihle provides dreamy worlds in which figures become topographies and each cavity houses a surprising detail. Look in the cheek of “Moreau/Detrick Reliquary” and find a woolly mammoth with shiny stones embedded in his wooden tusks. “Confluence” is similar to cut fish that bump from the foam-and-stick site next to trees and palms with widespread fingers.
Dihle’s sculptural paintings call up model railways and doll houses and contain recognizable objects, but with a creepy, if not crooked, perspective. The large -scale works extend almost five feet long, hang on the wall and draw a contrast between the overall composition, viewed directly, and the miniature vignettes that are best absorbed at an angle of 90 degrees. Step back and see an air landscape with hills in the form of lips or a sunken nose, while close-up inspection becomes a dizzying hunt for unlikely items that have been put in every crack.
The exhibition title comes from Hermit -Hobbyists, who seem to come to life when they are clayed in the world of their own. What outsiders seem like an escape from reality is an attempt for them to organize and control the chaos, even if they are in the form of toys and make-belief.
If you are in Chicago, look Cellar arrangement bee Andrew Rafacz up to and including July 18. Find more of dihle on his website.
