The Milky Way (2007) is a sprawling web of wood and neon tubes illustrating its title subject, but without pretending to be to scale, useful or even correct. The work hinges on the immediacy of easily recognised forms and symbols (lumber, lights, a jar of milk), which Dahlem has transformed into what he calls a “thought model” or “mental habitat”: “When I work on the sculptures I always try to be like a child… [thinking, for example,] today I’m going to build the cosmos with orbits of planets.”