David Altmejd
dal 8/10/2014 al 31/1/2015
Segnalato da
8/10/2014
David Altmejd
Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris - MAM, Paris
Flux. Altmejd's approach to sculpture is characterised by its wide variety of materials and a longstanding interest in the natural sciences and architecture. The exhibition presents creatures sometimes combining the anthropomorphic and the animal.
At ARC the Musée d'Art m
oderne
de la Ville de Paris is presenting Flux, the
first French retrospective of the work of David Altmejd. The exhibition
includes unshown and older pieces, together with his most recent and
certainly most ambitious monumental sculpture,
The Flux and The Puddle (2014).
The exhibition takes the form of a work in its own right, with creatures
sometimes combining the anthropomorphic and the animal: half
-vegetal, half- mineral hybrids that make play with the architecture of the museum as they spin
out their arachnoid labyrinths. David Altmejd's approach to sculpture is
characterised by its wide variety of materials and a longstanding interest in the
natural sciences and architecture.
Altmejd works in direct contact with psychic flux. In his "definitive dreamer's"
world action and consciousness merge: he dominates the grotesque and the
abject, combines aesthetics and 'glamour' and uses his sculptures to explore the
worlds of dream and nightmare in a mingled ambience of fascination and terror.
The exhibition reveals
a group of deliberately contradictory artistic
accomplishments
–
conceptual and processual, virtuoso and readymade
–
while
the flow of light from countless natural and artificial sources is split by the mirrors,
shattered or intact according to the sculpto
r's whim
,
that
it encounters.
Close to the cinema worlds of
Da
vid Cronenberg and David Lynch,
and marked like
all artists of his generation by the
works
of Matthew Barney, Altmejd
combines
mystical and alchemical elements with an aesthetic torn between structure and
dispersion. A theatre of shapes and organs in gestation, and of crystals in
formation, his work functions by strata, patiently assembling timeless sediments in
a sudden, exhilarating, dreamlike explosion.
Born in Montreal in 1974, David Altmejd
lives and works in New York. After
studying visual arts at the University of Quebec in Montreal, where he majored in
drawing and painting, he graduated as a sculptor in 1998. Fascinated by biology
and the cinema of the fantastic, he moved to New York and
in 2001 took out a fine
arts degree at Columbia University. In 2007 he represented Canada at the 52nd
Venice Biennale with his installation
The Index
and showed at the Istanbul and
Whitney Biennials in 2003 and 2004 respectively.
The exhibition will th
en travel to MUDAM in Luxembourg (7 March
–
31 May 2015)
and MACM in Montreal (18 June
–
13 September 2015).
A generously illustrated artist's book of 96 pages will be published by Paris Musées
to mark the exhibition. It will contain an essay by Louise D
éry and a conversation
between David Altmejd, François Michaud and Robert Vifian.
Image: Detail of
The Flux and The Puddle
2014
Photograph by James Ewing
© David Altmejd, Image courtesy of Andrea Rosen
Gallery, New York
Press Officer
Maud Ohana Tel.: 01 53674051 Email: maud.ohana@paris.fr
Press preview: Thursday 9 October 11 am–2 pm
Opening: Thursday 9 October 6–9 pm
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
11 Avenue du Président Wilson 75116 Paris
HOURS
Open Tuesday – Sunday
10 am – 6 pm
Late opening Thursday until 10 pm (Only exhibitions)
ADMISSION
Full rate : 7 €
Concessions : 5 €
Double Ticket (Delaunay + Altmejd) : 13€ et 9,50€ (concession)