David Altmejd: Faces, Modern Art

Canadian-born artist David Altmejd has enjoyed a wave of well received shows in recent years, including solos at the Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York and the current David Altmejd Paris exhibition at Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. For Altmejd’s first solo show in England since 2012, London contemporary art gallery, Modern Art, presents a new series of head-like sculptures that stand on tables and plinths.
What to know about David Altmejd: art and style
Altmejd’s large-scale sculptures explore the boundaries of the traditional figure. You might remember his recent Bodybuilder
series (2013/14), where Altmejd dragged material from one part of the body to another, taking matter from calves or legs and pulling it upwards. Also highly regarded are the figures of The Architects (2011) which seem to draw their mass directly from the walls of the gallery.
Sometimes embedded with items like hair, jewellery and crystals, Altmejd’s work is loaded with, what he describes as, symbolic potential. Left open to interpretation, these works are always about growth. Even the representation of decay is a positive action, Altmejd says, arguing that in the studio the artist is by definition always building and making.
Altmejd’s strangely captivating vision of man’s relationship to the world at Modern Art is an interesting addition to the London contemporary art calendar.