David Altmejd

(born in Montreal, Canada in 1974; lives and works in Los Angeles)
La chute, 2015, mirror, wood, steel, glue, 214.6 x 122.6 x 18.4 cm
Provenance:
Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
European Corporate Collection (acquired from the above)

Exhibited:
Montreal, Quebec, Galerie Renée Blouin,
20 June - 5 September 2015

“Actually, a mirror isn’t really the mirror itself that we see – it’s what it reflects. We see
ourselves in it, we see the objects in the space, we see their reflection in the mirror.

So the mirror doesn’t really have a color –
its color is the color of the things it reflects.
If a mirror were perfect – with no fingerprints, no dust, no cracks – it wouldn’t really exist visually. We wouldn’t see it.

So for me, the idea of taking a hammer and smashing it all at once is a way of allowing it to exist immediately. What might seem like
a destructive gesture is actually, for me,
a positive one. It was like a challenge: starting from an object that is very cold, industrial, almost architectural, very abstract – and then finding a way to inject life into it, to inject energy into it.“
David Altmejd

Photos: © David Altmejd Studio