Christian Tomaszewski at the Sculpture Center

Art installations are by their very nature slippery and somewhat disconcerting. After all, an artist takes over a space, transforming it into something it’s not, often relying on viewers to remember that everything they’re seeing is an illusion. “On Chapels, Caves and Erotic Misery,” the installation by Polish-born, New York–based artist Christian Tomaszewski at the Sculpture Center in Queens, is all the more disconcerting because it’s based on Blue Velvet, that creepy classic by David Lynch.

The exhibit begins downstairs, in pitch black. A screen simply states, “This film has been modified to fit your limits.” From here, a doorway opens to the left, into a long blue hallway—a cardboard replica of the hallway in Dorothy’s apartment building (see above)—or to the right, into a room filled with cardboard lamps and dioramas from the movie. There, we’re treated to Jeffrey’s view from the closet, screens that repeat stage directions, a neon sign for the Bang Bang bar that blinks on and off, a replica of the booth where Jeffrey and Sandy anxiously discuss recent events, etc.

Off of the hallway are various doors, most of which are locked but some of which lead into other rooms, filled with more art or scenes. Each door must be tried in order to figure out if it opens or doesn’t. We expected to see the final death tableau—with the Yellow Man and Dorothy’s husband—but didn’t. Sometimes the absence of something can be as unsettling as its presence.

The installation does a great job of showing the totality of Lynch’s world: Tomaszewski’s art reinforces the idea of Lynch as auteur. He masterminds everything, from the color of the booth’s fabric to the lamps used to light Dorothy’s hallway, and Tomaszewski can only repeat it, with varying degrees of success. For the real experience, the movie’s still the way to go.