With the installation 'Balling Ball Beach II', Jochen Dehn for the second time will be guest artist in the Corner Space of Galerie Thomas Schulte. Raw material for the installation is a large elm tree, which the artist has already shown at Brandenburgischer Kunstverein Potsdam e.V. Dehn had found the tree in a rural area close to the Polish border, subsequently had felled and disassembled it for storage at his studio in Paris. Each time the tree is installed anew the artist reassembles it into a new sculptural form adapted to the surrounding space.
The artist was drawn to that specific kind of tree because of his interest in the concept of concretion. While in sculpture concretion describes a cerebral, non-referential form, the etymology of the term derives from Latin concrescere 'grow together'. The trunk of Dehn's tree is an elm, which has been grafted with the branches of another tree, a so-called Scots elm. As a common practice in horticulture, concretion describes a tree’s ability to amalgamate a separate branch and incorporate it as living part of its own organism. Jochen Dehn with his sculptural gesture counteracts this natural phenomenon. In the installation the artist’s systematic dissections remain clearly visible and contrast with the natural, complex, and eccentrically curved shape of the tree.
