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.

"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.

Man 2 (2014) Photo by Lance Brewer David Altmejd, Image courtesy of

Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York

"La Palette" (2014)

"Untitled 8 (Bodybuilders)" (2013) (detail)

"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.

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.

"Untitled" (2009) (detail)

"Untitled" (2009) (detail)

"The Swarm" (2011) (detail)

"The Swarm" (2011) (detail)

"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

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

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).

"The Flux and The Puddle" (2014) (detail)

Yayoi Kusama, Fireflies on the Water (2002). Mirror, Plexiglas, 150 lights

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.

"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.

"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

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