I went to David Altmejd's show at Andrea Rosen about a month ago (top two row of images). I was first struck by the sculpture in the front entryway. It was the semblance of a human body - with repetition and body parts in all kinds of places as hands repeated as if their repetition was motion against the body. There was a gaping hole in the torso with the movement of the plaster frozen in movement outwards to show it had been dug out by those multiples of hands. There were multiple ears at the bottom of where the face would be and an plaster was frozen in air like a single angel wing behind the body. It felt as if this messy plaster being was caught in building its mutilated self and torn apart by itself all at the same time. There was a raw plaster feel - nothing fine tuned except some parts of the hands and feet which seemed to be made by casts.
It's funny - thinking back - the hands all seemed to be not an individual's hand but some kind of representation of what a hand would be in a dictionary...it was a perfect, regularly proportioned hand..it was a man's hand - not too big, not too small. The fingers were perfect lengths for the base of the hand...there seemed a lack of individuality. This is purely based on memory. I didn't take notes.
I very much enjoyed the show. I liked the raw plaster building/digging next to the very large plexiglass vitrines. (Two filled a nice sized room.) I liked the juxtaposition of rough plaster next to very clean and straight lines. There was something medical in the cleanliness, yet also playful- upon seeing rows of various brightly colored noses displayed, a colorful flower built of thread and sewn through holes drilled in plexi layers. Clean. Exact. The vitrines seemed to be the location of the factory - with us viewing the human(?) body being put together in mid stream - human(ish) hybrids being constructed in clear clean boxes. Yet, some of the human parts take over and escape as hands dig through the plaster the vitrines sit on - there is some chaos here. On the wall above the vitrines, a winged figure was scraped out the walls plaster, multiple hands doing the work.
The color brought in humor. The juxtaposition of materials did too --- the hair on some of the half made abominations was something like the werewolf hair above. It was fake and campy.
Altmejd is known for using werewolf hair and crystals and making human like monsters. (I don't exactly remember crystals in this show but I don't think it matters because according to an article I read - he doesn't use certain materials to be symbolic --- it's more about mood for him.)
Altmejd has been coined as Neo-Gothic (along with Sue de Beer, Banks Violette and I'd put Wim Delvoy in that mix). I am going to look into this movement further within this blog- I am attracted to all their work....probably the dark and grim aspects that exist in all their work.... Banks Violette supposedly made a melting unicorn head (as I did in college without knowing of his)...Sue de Beer makes well done special effects horror images that are photographed and Wim Delvoy has a dark intricacy within his over decorated dump trucks...and then their are the Xrays...
According to a Wmagazine article on Altmejd - he went to school with Sue de Beer and Banks Violette. They all went to the Columbia MFA program...I would like to look further into what is going on with that school...seems like a little movement that I like has been going on there.
In some readings about Altmejd:
From that same Wmagazine article (by Catherine Hong) -
Altmejd says "A lot of people think that I'm really fascinated by death and morbidity, but I'm much more interested in life. I just think that things look more alive when they're growing on top of what's dead."
I like this for some reason... After all, we are all mushrooms in many ways. Life and death are the same thing. Personally, I think I need to look more at death. It is coming up in Kristeva's Abject/Horror book - and I'm just now realizing how much humanity, in general, is all about death. I don't want to go with horror or something super direct though --- maybe...
On the subject of death (as much as Altmejd isn't into that - it is in his work - so I'm going with it) - I just read in a separate article by Art Agenda on Portikus presenting 'The Future of Tradition: Aranda, picasso, Matisse, Miro & Vidokle'. They mention a poem written by Miro in 1975 titled Adonides.
Here is the entire paragraph from Art Agenda (written by Thomas Stearns on May 3, 2011):
"Miro's Adonides (1975) presents a short two-stanza poem. It begins in a poverty of understanding: I ignore everything I know / and know nothing at all / of all that I ignore. Once affirmed, the poem continues: How can I / believe in death / when I know/ that you will die one day. Elegiacally the poet asks, since death is an unknowable, its absence can only be felt in the loss of a loved one, a loss to painful itself to even consider. Thus, death is an uncomfortable mystery. As such, the denial and anger aroused in passing can only be alienated through a mystical faith: the cycle of life and death made whole through incarnation and resurrection - the rebirth."
I love what the poet and the Stearns is saying about the poverty of understanding!!!!!!!!! But also his noticing that death is something we can't know - really know - unless faced with a loved one dying really speaks to me.
Back to Altmejd:
Wmagazine article again- continuing in the vein of Altmejd's work being about life that grows out of decay -
Altmejd says, "I think about decay not in a negative way, but in the sense of creating a space for things to start growing, " he explains. The furry time-ravaged corpse of his giant, for instance, is full of holes and caverns inhabited by birds and squirrels.".... Meanwhile, crystals, plants and sparkling beads seem to be sprouting from the giants' flesh, which his also punctured with shards of mirrored glass. The end result is something undoubtedly horrific but also strangely seductive."
Nancy Spector is quoted in this same article as saying:
"Though his work is quite different from Matthew Barney's, both artists share a regenerative vision, one that finds expression in grotesque beauty."
Maybe this is one of things about Barney's work that attracts me too... I think I look at cyborgs the same way... human adaption and growth - whether containing technology or the organic - it is about hybridity, movement and change, growth and finally, the body.
Additional quotes from the press release at Andrea Rosen:
'Altmejd's work mimics the complexity achieved in the natural world through the continual layering of elements and structures built up over millennia. Whether Altmejd begins from a point of symmetry or from a point of disorder, his works are ultimately shaped by the individual choices made at each point of construction. these works suggest the organic logic of the crowd where individual decisions can collectively generate a more intelligent whole.......Rather than creating terminal artworks, complete and ossified, Altmejd's works are manifestations of objects that are always transforming and forever open. Rather than crafting puzzles for viewer to solve, Altmejd generates structures and landscapes to inhabit.'
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