David Altmejd: Flux

The Musée d'art contemporain is proud to host the brilliant homecoming of David Altmejd, who is already well known from the US to Europe. Flux, a major survey exhibition, features some thirty works produced over the last fifteen years. The show also includes a site-specific mural and another new work, fresh out of the artist's New York City studio. Considered one of today's most talented artists on the international scene, Altmejd creates an organic yet phantasmagorical world that combines various forces of decay and regeneration in a fantastical life cycle.

The Flux and the Puddle, 2014, a key work in the show and the inspiration behind its title, brilliantly sums up⎯in a mini-retrospective and a reflection of his studio/laboratory⎯the main motifs and subjects that fill Altmejd's unique and powerful imagination. In a gigantic Plexiglass box, we see the organized chaos of mythical creatures (werewolf, birdman), animals, insects and plants that form his world. The artist produced them with incomparable skill and inventiveness, using a host of different synthetic and natural materials (epoxy clay, resin, quartz, sequins, mirror, hair, feathers, coconuts, coffee grounds, etc.).

Long interested in biology and life's metamorphoses, Altmejd possesses an endless curiosity that combines with his fascination with the world of dreams and nightmares. For example, his figures (such as bodybuilders) seem to create themselves with their own hands, to transform themselves by themselves.

Born in Montréal in 1974, David Altmejd lives and works in New York. He represented Canada at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007 and won the Sobey Art Award in 2009. His work may be found in numerous collections in Canada, the United States, France and Luxembourg. The Flux exhibition was designed and organized by the Musée d'art contemporain in collaboration with the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris and Paris Musées.