The sculptural installations made by Canadian David Altmejd, can be seen as a series of meetings. My first encounter with his work was at the Rosen Gallery in New York during the winter of 2004, for his first solo show. His use of mirrors, fake hair, gold rings and glass windows created a seductive and imperious impression. The equilibrium of opposites comes from his very specific point of view towards sculpture, which he stretches to transform nature into artificial effects; chic to shock. The Venice Biennale in 2007 consecrated the artist prodigy at the age of 33. Here, the Canadian Pavilion allowed him to lay out a strange environment, composed figures half human, half animal, embed in glass and steel cages. For his next exhibition in Grenoble, the giant figure is the threshold of Altmejd's very big idea: to transform mythological monsters and fascinating objects into autonomous structures bursting with energy.
This venue organized by Le Magasin in Grenoble, dedicated only to his work is almost a premiere in France. Once the fascination induced by a certain taste for morbidity and an attraction to strangeness passed, the environment's plastic poignancy holds one definitely. Along the same lines as the artist-director Matthew Barney, for his use of organic material or of the shaman Joseph Beuys for the energy deployed, Altmejd owes his work to minimalist space. Human or animal nature, created with wax or just presented through taxidermies of squirrel or birds, transformed into mirrors or suggested by hairs, is inhabited by fantastic strength. This is where the artist seeks his inspiration, which is according to him “much too underrated.”
Your next exhibition in the center of the Alpes, in Grenoble, will look different from environments you use to present. I notice especially an evolution concerning your monstrous figures, evolving from werewolf, to human giant and now to a more skeleton-like form. This exhibition deals with six giants that I already exhibited in Denver, Colorado. The idea is to rebuild a kind of maze that holds them together and is also linked to the architecture, covered by mirrors. I do not find them skeleton-like, even though they mirror consistency makes them look this way. I worked during several years on this werewolf figure. Including it into this architectural structure made me consider this question about the giant which presented the same issue of the body confronted to architecture. But the mirror is used as an organic effect: for instance, one of the giants has his intestines falling to the ground; others have their organs covered by mirrors. At that moment, the use of the mirror made want to shatter it, in order to create the effects of the organs' vulnerability.
The giants have a more cubical structure this time and some have inscriptions on them... Indeed, language is integrated as a poetic energy, in reference to the body, to nature and to organism. The Jewish cross on one of the giant is like a signature, but it has no political reason and is really more intuitive.
It seems as though we are moving away from hybrids which were half human, half animal, towards statues which are more made of monolith and completely transparent. I have this impression that before, we were going into organic structures and that now, we have to climb them? That is what I like about giants, this impossibility to be identified to our own body, because they are too tall. But the mirrored objects give an impression of more transparency, which creates a kind of contradiction between heavy and imposing dimensions, and the ghostly side of the mirror. I always try to find ways to make my sculptures alive, to inject poetic energy in references to nature. The use of crystals for instance suggests growth and transformation, whereas gold chains give birth to certain energy. I like the idea that if the viewer would come in two days, the sculpture would be totally different. This effect is the same with the mirrors, where the transformations are never-ending.
A few figures are closer to robots and seem inspired by science fiction movies from which you extract a lot of your imagery. Movies are very seductive elements which offer a real framework. I think fantastical films give me more freedom than realism in general.
To have seen your work in Venice for the Canadian Pavilion, viewers played an important role. How do you use objects inside your environment to integrate the viewer? I enjoy the power of objects, but I think their relation to the viewer is very limited. I try to give new insights to experiences like fantastical films do. For instance, my first use of the werewolf needed a view of different parts of the body. If one object was lying on shelves or in a box, in a corner, hidden or for all to see, the perception was completely different. That is why I create boxes full of mirrors, to create a periscope and to notice what we are not willing to see.
I was thinking about Canadian movie maker David Cronenberg, who gives a view on biological evolution, without falling into robotic images that science fiction often suggests. Some of your giants see to move away from this biological vision and are more into a robotic perception... The robotic effect is not on purpose, even though mirrors give this metallic impression. A few critics asked me the relation I perceive between the body and technology, but this is not something of interest for me. It may be for Cronenberg. I personally prefer the power of strangeness, which is totally underrated, when it is as significant as humor or horror. However I like the feelings that Cronenberg transmits to his viewer, faced with strangeness.
What about his metaphor of sexuality, especially in his movie Existenz? The idea of his “game part” being linked to something umbilical which and that goes through a hole close to the anus totally fascinates me.