art review of art review of david altmejd flux at arc the musée d'art moderne de la ville de paris
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Art review of David AltmejdFluxat ARC the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de ParisOctober 10th, 2014 - February 1st, 2015TRANSCRIPT
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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