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David Altmejd
Flux
ARC the Muse d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris
October 10th, 2014 - February 1st, 2015
The exhibition will then travel to MUDAM in Luxembourg (7 March
31
May 2015) and MACM in Montreal (18 June 13 September 2015)
published at Hyperallergic here
http://hyperallergic.com/179694/getting-lost-in-david-altmejds-hall-of-
mirrors/
Young New York-based Canadian artist David Altmejds
remarkably
ambitious retrospective exhibition of sculpture at the Muse dArt
moderne
de la Ville de Paris plays pithily with many current
intellectual strands
which interest me: anthropomorphism, dematerialization, science
fiction,
net culture, artificial life, image profusion and
micro-organisms. But what
struck me as most exact to its weird vitriolic propositions was
its deep
reflection (one might even say brooding) on proliferation and
loss.
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"The Builders" (2005)
The ripe delirium of Altmejds "The Builders" (2005), that opens
the show,
offers a kind of unconstrained reproductive and distributive
graphology with
its ambivalent notion of tumbling plethora. This assemblage
piece is
followed by a series of huge, freestanding, whimsy figures that
show a
deep and circular interaction with fantasy literature:
elaborately bizarre
sculptures in the grotesque and mannerist art tradition. This is
most
pronounced in the clunky but impressive "La Palette" (2014) and
"Untitled
8 (Bodybuilders)" (2013). Which, for me, seem too slushy and
specious for
much intellectually benefit. They try too hard to get a gnarly
reaction out of
me, and as such are not particularly compelling, even as clearly
this
figurative work displays a mordantly witty obsession with the
sumptuously
physical language of sculpture in terms of assembly and fusion.
But at its
worst, such as with "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz (2013) and Man
2
(2014), there is an art school 101 Surrealism vibe here.
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Man 2 (2014) Photo by Lance Brewer David Altmejd, Image courtesy
of
Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
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"La Palette" (2014)
"Untitled 8 (Bodybuilders)" (2013) (detail)
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"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz" (2013)
These and other towering figures were assembled out of visibly
distinct
and disjunctive parts. For example, "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
was
constructed out of what looked to be bananas. They then were set
in a row
in a series of huge mirrored galleries. This pleasingly enhanced
their retinal
quality, while reminding me of a department store fashion
boutique.
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Flux installation shot
But with his virtuoso vitrine tableaus of mirrored accumulation,
like
"Untitled" (2009), The Swarm (2011) and "The Flux and The
Puddle"
(2014), one immediately feels a sense of sinister and
humorous
proliferation snap into place as psychedelic glamour. A
wandering aptitude
for creepy amusement is felt behind such hyper-like work. Along
with a
sensing of an overall conveyance of longing, connected to
cultural
amnesia - our experience of encountering (and losing) wildly
disjunctive
data on the Internet.
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"Untitled" (2009) (detail)
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"Untitled" (2009) (detail)
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"The Swarm" (2011) (detail)
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"The Swarm" (2011) (detail)
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"The Swarm" (2011) (detail)
"The Swarm - a technosphere abuzz with winged bees, plaster
ears
coupled to look like butterflys, floating pin-cushion heads, and
much pastel
filament - displays anthropomorphic tendencies and
organizational
patterns of becoming. Here Altmejd raises the issue of
ornamentation out
of the opinion that it is mere exterior decoration and into the
arena of
understanding living in hyper-media awareness. As such, I place
its
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complex mutation logic in with Fantasy and Visionary artists
such as H. R.
Giger, Ernst Fuchs and Gilles Barbier. But The Swarm performs in
terms
of a nimble refraction of femininity, using pastel colors,
thread and needles
to create a floating visual labyrinth that brings to sculpture a
certain ripe
sense of pliability that I usually associate with biology.
"The Flux and The Puddle" (2014) (detail)
Now abundant accumulation in sculpture is nothing new. One need
only
recall the work of French sculptor Csar, or more recently, Joel
Otterson.
But taken as a lapidary whole, Altmejds vitrine pieces deliver
an added
airy reach by tying together methods of restless grid formality
with a
visceral swamp of camp irony: at turns annoyingly hip and
flamboyantly
outrageous. For example, his sublime gesamtkunstwerk of
metamorphosis, "The Flux and The Puddle," mixes dreamy ideals
of
flamboyance with a hard materialistic sensationalism that
demanded my
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aesthetic contemplation.
This huge work seemed conspicuously to be a form of
spiritualizing virtual-
actual expression that physically embodies the disappearing
ephemeral we
associate with electronically provided information in
hyper-media - and the
flickering of its translucent excess. The viewer must toil
devotedly to solve
the ad infinitum mirrored visual conundrums supplied here. She
must
contribute mental transitions between its diverse assortments of
mirrored
sculptural elements. She must fabricate a vague fairy-tale out
of this grisly-
mirrored mlange, even as it keeps slipping in and out of
personal
narration.
This kind of stimulating conceptual discernment generally
involves a
repetitive intertwining visual logic that ensnares the eye and
establishes
the impression of a heightened concern with ambiguousness.
Thus
stylistically, "The Flux and The Puddle" must be seen as a
synthesis of Op
Art and Psychedelic Art.
There is the obvious communality it shares with Lucas Samarass
Room
2 (1966), Christian Megert's Mirror Environment (1968) and
Domingo
Alvarezs Mirror Environment (1972). It also recalls Yayoi
Kusamas
similar sculptural strategies that use mirrored-rooms to enhance
the feeling
of an expansive immersion into infinity. Such as her famous
Narcissus
Garden (1966-), Infinity Mirror Room (Phalli's Field) #3 (1964),
Fireflies
on the Water (2002) and Dots Obsession - Infinity Mirrored
Room
(2008).
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"The Flux and The Puddle" (2014) (detail)
Yayoi Kusama, Fireflies on the Water (2002). Mirror, Plexiglas,
150 lights
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and water, 111 144 1/2 144 1/2 in. (281.9 367 367 cm) overall.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from
the Postwar Committee and the Contemporary Painting and Sculpture
Committee and partial gift of Betsy Wittenborn Miller
2003.322a-tttttttt. Yayoi Kusama. Photograph courtesy Robert Miller
Gallery
Like Kusama, with "The Flux and The Puddle," Altmejd is pulling
sculpture
into a developmental logic of the infinite by atomizing and
disintegrating
customary visual competence. Like Kusamas Fireflies on the
Water, the
delicate graceful pleasure of "The Flux and The Puddle" is that
it opens
thought up to poststructuralist spaces of malleable and
combinatory
superfluity. As such, it suggests a deep dive into our casual
culture of
instant gratification by opening possibilities of infinite
perpetual
multiplication that results from its reverberant structure.
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"The Flux and The Puddle" (2014) (detail)
Like Kusama, Altmejd is very good when providing decomposing
figurative
sculpture that unites-and-quivers in the infinite. This offers
the viewer an
artistic contrivance of being freed of corporal form, suspended
in an
ecstasy of shattered sight. As such, Altmejds suggestive
optical/conceptual ornamentation is almost mesmeric.
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"The University 1" (2004)
"The University 1" (2004) (detail)
This sympathetic assertion on my part concerning Altmejds work
as
possibly being multiple and unified simultaneously, seems
plausible, as
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Altmejd, with "The University 1" (2004), appears cognizant of
the principles
of machines that produce streams of optical flux. With it,
Altmejd (early-on)
transmits a sense of an exalted state of mind-machine, one that
imposes
power, energy and anxiety through its labyrinthine extensions,
doublings
and duplications.
So the second half of Flux provided me with a form of
flamboyant
indulgence in perceptual stimulation that might be dismissed
as
superfluous by some. But I think today it is pivotal in
understanding our all-
encompassing electronic media culture. Fluxs enthusiastic
impertinence
conceptually connected me to ideas of decentralized modes of
distribution
typical of zombie capitalism in a way as pleasurable to see, as
it is
constructive to ponder.
Joseph Nechvatal
David Altmejd