Pull up a chair - several chairs even - at GoMA

WHAT DOES Jim Lambie have against furniture? He always seeems to be taking a saw to it and dismembering it.

The answer is: Nothing, really. He likes tables, chairs and doors and all the other stuff we surround ourselves with at home. The thing is, he can see how to turn it into something completely different.

At GoMA in Glasgow, he has sliced a pile of chairs in half, gone through the colour chart at the diy store paint shelves and given each piece a shiny gloss of a different hue. Then he has reassembled the bits into a multi-coloured, lattice-like heap taller than himself.

To add extra sparkle, he has stuck bits of broken mirror, crazy paving-style, on to a score of handbags and hung them on, too.

Seven And Seven Is, or Sunshine Bathed The Golden Glow, to give its alternative titles, is one of eight new sculptures from Lambie on show in his native city this summer.

Lambie has also covered the floor of the main gallery with one of his famous site-specific works in vinyl tape. In contrast to the classical orderliness of the coffered ceiling and the gilded Corinthian columns, the floor swirls with movement.

Disconcertingly, the pattern is one which a builder once wanted to use on a ceiling of mine, dragging a big wooden comb across the wet plaster in sweeping arcs -- but this is on the floor.

It's one art work that you're not banned from touching. Indeed, you're invited to walk all over it, since it covers every inch of floor space, which probably accounts for the long list of people Lambie thanks for their assistance with this exhibition.

Vertigo sufferers must be grateful that he has not chosen one of those patterns which trick the eye into seeing slopes and steps where there are none. They can walk round without fearing they will fall over, unless they trip on another exhibit, Sonic Reducer.

This is eight concrete cubes which appear to be sinking into the floor at an angle. Each contains two or three dozen record sleeves which once protected works by artists as diverse as Beethoven and Perry Como.

Much of Lambie's work is associated with music - the title of the exhibition, Forever Changes - is taken from a 1968 album by the American band Love.

Other associations abound. Mirrors are fixed on a framework hanging from the ceiling in the shape of the stars in Cancer. The arms of the framework, which copy the lines connecting the stars in astronomy book illustrations, are covered with photographic transfers of eyes, like watchers in the sky.

Back to furniture with a piece called The Spell. Doors go under the saw this time, and the bits are reassembled a few feet off the floor in a big cube covered with gold leaf.

Leather jackets aren't safe, either. Lambie has cut up a few of various colours, stuffed the bits and stitched them together to resemble a multi-limbed sea creature stalking the gallery floor.

Perhaps the most bizarre creation is Head Shadow. Here a dozen spray cans support a horizontal dartboard on which is placed a travel bag. Straps from many other bags are riveted on the travel bag, which assumes the air of a dwarf, snake-haired Gorgon.

The only splashes of colour on the floor are the fluorescent splurges from the spray cans. Someone has dropped a large scrumpled paper bag and a gallery attendant, aping the visitors snapping the real sculptures, pretends to take a photo of it. It's that kind of show -- everything's seemingly all light-hearted and playful.

Lambie has lived and worked in the city since graduating from Glasgow School of Art in 1994 and his art has been seen at the Venice Biennale, the Carnegie International and the Turner Prize exhibition.

His work is a triumph of imagination over the banal perceptions of reality. Where we may see a chair mostly in terms of its function, as something to sit on, Lambie sees it as a shape, an object with possibilities for being changed into a sculpture. The sculpture still says 'chair' but now has other and quite different associations.

He takes the everyday, analyses the form, dissects it and creates something new. It's a step or two further on from objets trouves. Lambie seeks out his found objects in junk shops and diy stores. But then he doesn't just use them as found, but transforms them into something more elaborate and richer.

DENIS INCH
denis@whooshbooks.com

Forever Changes, sculpture by Jim Lambie, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, until September 29.