David Altmejd‘s works explore the boundaries of traditional figuration by embedding his subjects with otherworldly elements and reconceptualizing how to represent the human figure in all its spatial, spiritual and psychological multiplicity.
Considered one of today’s most talented artists on the international scene, Altmejd creates an organic yet phantasmagorical world that combines various forces of decay and regeneration in a fantastical life cycle.
In describing his work, he says “a perpetual tension must be there, between the attractive and the repellent, like the two poles necessary to maintain vital force” and “when I work, the body is like a universe where I can lose myself. It is a metaphor for the landscape, nature and the mountains”.
Born in Montréal in 1974, David Altmejd lives and works in New York. After studying visual arts at the Université du Québec à Montréal, where he majored in drawing and painting, he graduated as a sculptor in 1998.
Fascinated by biology and science-fiction film, he moved to New York, where he earned an MFA at Columbia University in 2001. Altmejd represented Canada in 2007 at the 52nd Venice Biennale with the installation The Index, and took part in the Istanbul and Whitney Biennials in 2003 and 2004, respectively.
Untitled, 2010. Courtesy of David Altmejd
The Flux and The Puddle (detail), 2014. Courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York. Photo by James Ewing
Untitled 8 (Rabbit Holes), 2014. Courtesy of David Altmejd
The Flux and The Puddle (detail), 2014. Courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York. Photo by James Ewing
The Vessel (detail), 2011. Courtesy of David Altmejd
Discover: www.davidaltmejd.com
