Stuart Shave / Modern Art are pleased to present a show of new works by Canadian sculptor David Altmejd in his first solo show in the UK.

Altmejd’s palette is a combination of materials that conduct and imply the emission and circulation of energy. Crystals and mirrors sit alongside delicate gold chains that weave around large-scale sculptures, carrying and distributing energy as they meander. This flow of energy is central to Altmejd’s work and the theories behind this importance are based in the artist’s own homespun folklore surrounding the myth of the werewolf. Altmejd believes that the release of energy at the exact point of a werewolves’ decapitation gives possibility to transformation and growth. In this sense Altmejd’s works are not rooted in death but at the point immediately ensuing, where the ‘dead body, if it is ever really dead’1 is imbued with intense potentiality. The werewolf as a symbol of metamorphosis and duality holds a particular quality in its closeness to the human form, but it is its location on the borderline of reality and fantasy that reduces the audiences’ personal identification. This dislocation from the familiarity of the human figure allows Altmejd to speak of the body in a way that leaves the works palpably more unnerving and macabre.

Fundamental to Altmejd’s practice is an enjoyment in the tension between his own interests and the materials he uses to investigate and express them. By placing romanticised interpretations of Minimalist architecture alongside the decadence of the baroque interior, Altmejd pulls stylistically conflicting aesthetics together to create an environment of contrast. In the same way materials are used to suggest a friction between decay and the energy inherent within it. Organic swellings of mirrors cut into crystal-like forms grow from points of energetic rupture, punctuating the pastel tones of the deliberately placed architecture that under spotlight take on the expression of retail display furniture; all combining to compose choreographed moments in the delicately composed language used by Altmejd to explore the energy within opposition.

Beneath the immediate veneer of decadence, Altmejd consciously leaves evidence of construction, giving direct access to the artist’s process-led approach to making. It is in the artist’s intricate layering of visual and physical production qualities that Altmejd achieves a revealing of beauty as vulnerability. Altmejd’s sculptures contain intensities of focus and detail that rise and fall across physically constructed levels that describe intricate narratives within their own infrastructure.

Altmejd b. 1974, Montreal, lives and works in New York and London. Showing widely in America and Canada, Altmejd was also selected to participate in the Whitney Biennial in 2004.