LONDON.- White Cube announced representation of New York-based artist David Altmejd (b. 1974, Montreal). A solo exhibition of his work, the first in Asia, will open at White Cube Hong Kong in March 2019.
Altmejd’s work combines science, magic, science fiction and gothic romanticism. ‘A perfect object for me’, the artist has said, ‘is something that is extremely seductive and extremely repulsive at the same time’.
Some of Altmejd’s best-known works are his vast, labyrinthine vitrines built of Plexiglas, often with mirrored elements. They play on the aesthetics of design and display as well as minimalism, but are not simply a means to contain or protect the elements within. Rather, the entire structure is an organism or a machine, making visible the processes of growth and decay that take place inside it.
In his recent life-sized sculpted heads, Altmejd combines skilful realism with crude expressionism, using gobbets of raw matter or hanks of fur. One head might sprout another, inverted, sharing a pair of eyes. Some faces are scooped out entirely, with gaping wounds revealing interiors of dazzling crystal or hollowed-out fruit, collapsing the categories of animal, vegetable and mineral.
His monochrome relief panels are austere in comparison, focusing the viewer’s attention on plaster-like material and the actions wrought on it – where it has fallen in wet splats, or hands have gouged and clawed its chalky surface. Hands in cast form also appear and multiply, creating the illusion that the works create themselves. Monumental series’ of figures, such as the ‘Bodybuilders’ and the ‘Watchers’, are similarly engaged in their own making or unmaking, sprouting hands that clutch and mould the very substance of their bodies.
Coinciding with Art Basel Hong Kong (29 – 31 March 2019), David Altmejd’s first White Cube exhibition will include new sculptures alongside other examples of his work. The show runs from 26 March until 18 May 2019 (preview 25 March 2019).
David Altmejd was born in Montreal in 1974 and lives and works in New York. He studied at the University of Quebec in Montreal and graduated with an MFA from Columbia University, New York in 2001. His numerous international exhibitions include a major survey exhibition, Flux, which travelled from Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris to the MUDAM in Luxembourg and the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, Canada (2014-15). In 2007 he represented Canada at the 52nd Venice Biennale with his installation The Index, and he was included in the Istanbul and Whitney Biennials in 2003 and 2004 respectively.
