November 29, 2003
David Altmejd
This is a short text written for the exhibition brochure that will accompany "Scream: 10 Artists x 10 Writers x 10 Films," the January-February group exhibition at Anton Kern Gallery.
David Altmejd’s grotesque sculptures, usually of heads or other fragments of monster bodies, directly engage the repressed underside of our imagination. He looks past the imagery of B-movie horror clichés to a morbid, Victorian-era definition of the heinous (typified by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein); he conjures implausible sculptures into being as if channeling spirits through the Ouija board. When peering closely at the details of Altmejd’s decapitated and decaying hand-crafted heads, it is difficult to shake the uncanny sensation that the werewolf eye may blink open at any moment, springing to life like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. Yet the intensely appealing layer of crystals, glitter, rhinestones, jewelry, and other materials that seem to sprout organically from the plaster sculptures defers the horror of beholding such objects. Altmejd understands that the process of decay carries within it the promise of growth; his objects arrest the moment where the former transforms into the latter.
The sculptures are often integrated with pedestals that recall mid-century furniture or modernist sculptures. They present horizontal surfaces at different heights, often have mirrored elements, and, importantly, allow for a theatricalized placement of the heads. Altmejd frequently carves box-like tunnels out of these structures, placing a head in a form-fitting hall of mirrors that distorts perception. This act calls to mind Robert Smithson’s use of the material and exploration of entropy. Yet unlike in Smithson’s work, Altmejd’s structures seem sound (his 2002 solo exhibition was titled “Clear Structures for a New Generation.”) It is the body that inevitably decays.
Several of Altmejd’s most recent works attach the werewolf heads to bodies. For an installation at the Istanbul Biennial, the mirrored boxes were not only carved out of the pedestal, but also from the body itself, exposing bones that traverse Altmejd’s otherwise empty mirrored cubes. Like a mad scientist, having brought these unnatural creatures into being, Altmejd is now meticulously picking them apart.