David Altmejd

The first major monograph on the art of David Altmejd. Essays by Trinie Dalton, Christopher Glazek, Robert Hobbs, and Kevin McGarry. Edited by Isabel Venero. David Altmejd is known for his intricate and highly worked room-size installations and sculptures. Seamlessly moving between a variety of aesthetic modes - from an almost ascetic minimalism in works employing plaster and mirror to works teeming with accumulations of crystals, gold chains, thread, taxidermied birds and animals, among other objects - Altmejd's work offers beautifully wrought material meditations on the cycles of life and death, interiority and exteriority, sexuality, and spirituality. In the most comprehensive consideration of the artist's work to date, the volume includes four essays by a range of writers, who by providing different entry points to Altmejd's art, animate and engage the rich and diverse ideas that characterize his important practice. David Altmejd (b. 1974 in Montreal) lives and works in New York. He has shown widely in America, Canada, and Europe. In fall 2014, Altmejd will have a major solo exhibition at the Musee d'art Moderne de la ville de Paris, France. Other recent solo presentations of his work include the Brant Foundation Art Study Center in Connecticut (2011) and Magasin - Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble, France (2009). In 2007, the artist represented Canada at the 52nd Venice Biennale with his largest installation work to date, The Index. His work is included in many important public collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Galerie de L'UQAM, Montreal; Les Abattoirs, Toulouse; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.