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ANDREA ROSEN GALLERY - David Altmejd

991 views · Published 23 February 2014 · 7:31 · Indexed 23 September 2026

Channel: NYC GALLERY OPENINGS · 2014 · Entertainment

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David Altmejd
Juices

February 1st - March 8th, 2014
Opening:  January 31st 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

On the heels of his new, encyclopedic monograph published by Damiani and 
a forthcoming survey exhibition at the Museé d'Art Moderne de la Ville de 
Paris, we are proud to present David Altmejd's fourth solo exhibition at the 
gallery. 

Altmejd's language unfolds over three exhibition spaces, creating distinct 
environments that shift perceptions of matter and time, surface and structure, 
interior and exterior. The progression starts with The Flux and The Puddle, a 
deeply layered slice of a universe that fills the first room of the gallery. 
Altmejd's ability to hold seemingly infinite layers of information manifests 
itself in a transparent, mirrored and multilevel structure that houses all of the 
varied bodies of work in his extensive practice: werewolves, plaster figures, 
bird men, heads, smashed mirrored panels, and explosions of resin fruit. With 
its complexity and depth, the work demands a physical experience. 

One action of the artist's hand informs the next so that the work builds itself, 
yielding unexpected breakthroughs. Thousands upon thousands of intuitive 
decisions cumulate in a network of meaning. In The Flux and The Puddle, 
channels and staircases of pouring and pooling liquids intertwine among 
figures forming a circular progression between human and nonhuman, 
abstraction and representation. These animated arrangements are 
simultaneously frozen streams of expansion, isolation and disorientation. 

Altmejd's work often draws a corollary between the body and architecture 
with architectural landscape punctuated by figurative elements or figurative 
sculptures blown up to gigantic scale or infected with inorganic material. In 
the work in the second gallery, The Eve, a solitary, seated figure is inverted 
and suspended in space. The sculpture emphasizes the process of addition 
and subtraction; each detail is imperative. There is an intentionality in every 
line, scratch and hole. Combining three of Altmejd's well known bodies of 
work: the architectural Plexiglas environments, the growing/organic body of 
werewolves and giants, and the suspended clay figures, the work is 
simultaneously radical and beautiful. In the third gallery the viewer is led to a 
human sized head. This head becomes a focal point of Altmejd's language; a 
macrocosm condensed into a jewel-like microcosm. 

Altmejd's practice mines the space that separates the inside from the outside. 
Architecture becomes as much about permeability as structure. Seemingly 
disparate worlds, the nervous system and webs of energy or the mythological 
transformation of werewolves and the biological growth of fruit into plants 
are bound together. Using base material--thread, mirror, plaster, resin, 
sequins, artificial hair and ceramics--Altmejd's work is an expression of the 
visceral power of sculptural objects. 

David Altmejd was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1974 and received his MFA 
from Columbia University in New York. Altmejd is currently preparing for 
forthcoming exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada, from 
February 22 - October 4, and a major survey exhibition at the Musée d'Art 
moderne de la Ville de Paris (MAM/ARC) in October 2014. Most recently, 
Altmejd was recognized with a solo exhibition at the Brant Foundation Art 
Study Center in Greenwich, Connecticut (2011-2012). In 2007, the Fundació La 
Caixa Museum in Barcelona, Spain, presented a show of the artist's work 
curated by Sílvia Sauquet. That same year, Altmejd was commissioned by 
Louise Déry to represent the Canadian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale, 
which was accompanied by a catalogue. He has also participated in the 2004 
Whitney Biennial, curated by Chrissie Iles, Shamim M. Momin and Debra 
Singer, and the 8th Istanbul Biennial, curated by Dan Cameron in 2003. The 
artist's work has been exhibited worldwide, and is in the permanent 
collections of numerous institutions, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim 
Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary 
Art Los Angeles, Galerie de L'UQAM, Les Abattoirs, Museé d'Art Contemporain 
de Montreal, and Museé d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg. The 
artist lives and works in New York. 

Music by:
Chill Carrier - A New Day

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