David Altmejd

The work of David Altmejd impels our gaze toward strange regions, plunging it into the hollows of the imagination, allowing us a glimpse inside the cavernous zone where reality can initiate its own reinvention. His sculptures present themselves as a joyful arena, a place that fosters sensory excess, a teeming world that distils memory and life. They raise the image of Borges's library, with its galleries and wells, balustrades and staircases, bookshelves and cabinets that contain, and at the same time disseminate, the riches of Babel. 

The works exhibited here date from 1997 to 2007. In them, we discover Altmejd's interest in energy and bodily metamorphosis. The artist explores aesthetic tensions as contrasting as those introduced by Formalism and Postmodernism. He scrutinizes the features of many a ghost of artistic traditions past - the socle, the ornament, the gisant, the vanitas, the relic, the replica - subjecting each to scintillating, transformative mirror effects. The resulting works have a labyrinthine complexity. Pastiches of bodies and fragments of bodies - laden with glitter, jewellery and charms, adorned with flowers, squirrels and crystals - are deployed in an exuberantly theatrical decor. The monumentality and luxuriance of the cases that provide an ornate setting for these deconstructed bodies are a metaphor for the baroque chaos of today's world.  

David Altmejd is a Montréal born Canadian Artist. He first attended Université du Québec à Montréal, then later completed his MFA at Columbia University. Altmejd has been part of a variety of projects and shows including, Artists Space, and the Istanbul, Whitney, and Venice Biennales. He represented Canada at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007). Currently many of his works reside at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.