Life in the Fast Lane

David Altmejd is a Canadian artist who incorporates elements of fantasy and the grotesque into his sculptures will represent Canada at the 2007 Venice Biennale of Visual Art, competing for the $50,000 Sobey Art Award. Photo by Canada Council.

David Altmejd’s sculptures mix random objects such as decapitated werewolf heads with graffiti-style Stars of David, stained Calvin Klein underwear, towers made of mirrors, plastic flowers and faux jewelry, to create sculptural systems for what he calls “symbolic potentialâ€? and open ended narratives.

He’s known in the art world as the werewolf guy, because of his sculptures of werewolves, partially decayed corpses, made with resin, fake hair, jewellery and glitter.

CBC.ca reports that Altmejd doesn’t yet know what kind of work he’ll create for the space, but he says he wants to incorporate some natural elements.

“I see an aviary with a lot of weird birds,” he told CBC Arts Online, speaking from London on Tuesday. He also may create a colossus, similar to The Giant, a work that is currently being shown at London’s Modern Art Inc. gallery.

“I’ve always been interested in the human body,” Altmejd said. “I work a lot with werewolf parts and figures, which are very human-like. When I work, the body is like a universe where I can lose myself. The giant is a … metaphor for the landscape, nature and the mountains. It is a way I can work on the landscape through a body.”

Altmejd’s work features geometric elements such as cubes, boxes and steps, mixed with body parts and images and objects out of fairytales, including jewels and sprays of flowers.

A David Cronenberg fan, Altmejd says the grotesque has been a recurring fascination for him. “Fantasy is a device I use to put the real aspect in perspective.” he said.

Louise Déry, the director of Galerie de l’UQAM, says she believes the fantastic and grotesque items in Altmejd’s sculptures give them a playful, optimistic quality that appeals to the young.

“It’s a curious paradox,” she said. “He creates a world where some things are very ugly and some are very glamorous, like the jewels.”

“You understand there is something positive about it. It’s not expressing the terrible world we live in, but something more hopeful.”

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David Altmejd grew up in the Snowdon neighborhood of Montreal, but now lives and works mostly in London, England. In 2001, he completed his Masters of Fine Arts at Columbia University. He also holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal, in Montreal, Canada.

He has taken part in numerous high profile shows such as:
Artists Space and Deitch Projects — New York City.
2003 — curated into the 8th International Istanbul Biennial
2004 — included in the Whitney Biennial of American Art
2007 — Canada’s officially selected national artist for the Venice Biennale
Represented in New York City by Andrea Rosen Gallery

Altmejd has also sold works to New York’s Guggenheim Museum and two of those works are touring now in Bonn, Germany.

A show of his work is also open now in Montreal as part of the Montreal Biennale. It’s at the Galerie de l’UQAM, at the corner of Berri and St. Catherine Streets. Admission is free. The Montreal Biennale continues through July 8.

In an interview with Randy Gladman from Akrylic:

Altmejd confesses, “It is as if I have defined my confidence through my work. I discovered that I could make huge super-intense crazy objects in this world, and that was my way of feeling that I existed… so maybe that’s why I’m addicted to it right now.”

R: You have particular symbols that you use like a language. They appear in different forms in different pieces and the interaction between them creates a language.

D: Rather than a language, I am more interested in how the elements create energy. I know that the things I use, the Star of David or certain words affiliated with political activism, are charged and have important meaning potential. I inject them inside the installation and the meaning potential transforms into energy. My involvement is to create something that is alive that will be able to say new things.

The energy of these living abstract organisms depends on the meanings of the work being unresolved, uncontrolled. When meaning is controlled, the resulting object is not alive.

I made an installation last year at a gallery in Brussels and two guys were hanging out near the piece during the opening. When they came up to me they said, “That piece is definitely talking about the Holocaust.� In my mind I thought “No, not really�. But then I realized that just because I made the object doesn’t mean I get to determine what the object is saying.

R: So you don’t think your work is political?

D: To me, it is all intuitive.

R: But when you use a symbol like the Star of David, it is as iconographic as a swastika. It undeniably carries a political meaning. Are you using it just to charge the work with energy? Is that responsible?

D: I know that when I use an image like a Star of David there is the potential for something to happen. A thousand things could happen. But in comparison to an icon like the swastika, the Star of David is so much more interesting. With a swastika, only one thing can happen. I know exactly how a swastika will function inside my installation. It is too obvious and I don’t like that I know what will happen. I don’t want to know. You know? I am very interested in that void. In order to make something that is new, that says new things, you have to be able to use intuition and not really know in advance what is going to happen. If it is totally controlled then there is nothing new.

R: When you use the Star of David are you thinking about the connections to what is happening in Israel? I mean, the theme of the Istanbul biennial is “Poetic Justice�. It is about justice and there is obviously a global debate going on today about justice between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

D: I don’t want to sound stupid or give you the impression that I do not want to take responsibility for what occurs in my work. But I feel that it is very much like having a kid. It is very problematic when your child grows up and becomes someone with a totally independent mind. What is your responsibility as a parent for the horrible things that he does as an adult?

You brought that child into this world; he has half of your genetic system. You taught him to be polite, how to read, how to count. But then he has a mind of his own. I am interested in where the responsibility lies. I want to make an installation and then at a certain point step back and say “Wow, that’s amazing. It is going in all sorts of different places; it is a thing on it’s own.�

R: Werewolf heads appear again and again in your work. I’m not sure if this has a specific meaning for you or not.

D: I started using that three years ago. At the beginning it was just an alternative to the human body. I made a chopped-up werewolf. Body art is so familiar, in terms of experience. By making a monster leg, it has something of the familiar feeling but there is an added level of weirdness. Then I was very interested in the werewolf because of its complexity, its symbolic potential. It represents both good and evil, human and animal, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — extremes on both sides.

Every time I talk about my work I use the word “energy� a lot, not in a new age kind of way. The werewolf head with crystals on it is an energy-generating object. A man transforms into the werewolf, which is the most intense transformation, physically and mentally. The werewolf goes from one state, man, to a totally opposite state, animal, in the matter of minutes or even seconds. In movies it always happens in, like, thirty seconds. It even looks painful.

R: Have you been influenced by Julia Kristeva’s “Powers of Horror; An Essay on Abjection�? There are a lot of seemingly abject objects in your work; death, dismemberment, scarification, corpses.

D: I am really not interested in gore. What I make has to be positive and seductive. Instead of rotting, the characters in my work are crystallizing. This makes the narratives of the pieces move towards life rather than death.

R: So even where there is a decapitated werewolf you are being optimistic?

D: Yes, totally. It is intended to be alive. Maybe weird and dark, but certainly alive.

All artwork photos by Andrea Rosen Gallery.

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