Truls Melin’s painted, glossy sculptures have been “fertilized” by American Minimalism, Continental theory, and Danish classicism. But Melin’s relation to his sources is definitely impure. The elements he uses seem terribly familiar: a table, a fence, an airplane, a dog, a teapot, an engine, a submarine. They are, however, combined with abstract, geometric forms into fragmented wholes that defy every attempt at categorization. At once conceptually elusive and spatially assertive, Melin’s works create a paradoxical, slightly absurd impression.

Batyskaf (Bathyscaphe, 1992) is a submarine placed on