First Werewolf, 1999
Second Werewolf, 2000
Photo :
Richard-Max Tremblay,
courtesy Galerie de l'UQAM
Untitled (Dark), 2001
Photo :
Ron Amstutz,
courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
Artist David Altmejd and curator Louise Déry, director of the Galerie de l’UQAM, will represent Canada at the 2007 Venice Biennale
Le 12 juillet 2006 - Louise Déry, director of the Galerie de l’UQAM, will curate the Canadian Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale. She will represent Canada with an exhibition of Montreal artist David Altmejd, organized by the Galerie de l’UQAM. The Venice Biennale is the oldest and most prestigious recurring international exhibition of contemporary art.
Louise Déry was prompted to nominate the 32-year-old Altmejd because of the incredible aesthetic power of his oeuvre. The young Montrealer’s career has already garnered international attention at the Istanbul and Whitney biennials, the Frankfurter Kunstverein, and in the Guggenheim and Whitney collections. According to the curator, “Altmejd seeks to metabolize reality into a teeming, vital immediacy, creating objects lyrical and mysterious, phantasmagorical and metaphysical, whose aesthetic refinement explores the extreme limits of today’s prevailing artistic notions. His sculptures present themselves as a joyful playground, revelling in sensual excess, and are certain to make a strong impression on the imagination of visitors to the Venice Biennale.”
The Canada Council for the Arts supervised the process of selecting Canadian works for the Biennale. The selection committee was composed of three experts on international contemporary art: Bruce Grenville, curator, Vancouver Art Gallery; Wayne Baerwaldt, director, Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta College of Art & Design, and guest curator at the Biennale de Montréal 2007; and Anne-Marie Ninacs, curator, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.
The Exhibition
In the work to be presented in Venice, David Altmejd will focus his attention on the figure of the giant or colossus. By creating an immense, partially upright body, fragmented throughout the exhibition space of the Pavilion and reflected in an arrangement of mirrors (partitions, platforms, etc.), he will rally this symbol of life around a homo naturalis or homo animalis, a sort of werewolf whose humanity is absorbed by and resolved in a form of animality. The werewolf is a complex figure because it can be viewed as a metaphor of being, divided between good and evil, and of our own destiny in this age of cloning and genetic manipulation.
The work for the Canadian Pavilion will show a body exploded in space, emerging from a sort of eternal night, intriguing and mysterious. The work will strike a chord with today’s youth through a romantic sensibility based on humanistic thought with medieval overtones, by way of references to legends, sculptures culled from Romanesque tympanums, gisants patterned after ancient tombs, and monsters from contemporary science fiction and graphic novels.
David Altmejd
David Altmejd lives and works in Montreal, Brooklyn and London. He has degrees in visual art from UQAM (BA, 1998) and Columbia University (MFA, 2001). He is represented by the Andrea Rosen Gallery (New York) and Modern Art Inc. (London). His work has been shown in Quebec (Galerie de l’UQAM in 2001, Skol, Optica, Clark, B-312), the United States and Europe. In a few years, David Altmejd has already acquired an international reputation, notably participating in the Istanbul (2003) and Whitney (2004) biennials, and his works can be found in collections as important as those of the Guggenheim and Whitney museums in New York.
Louise Déry
Curator, author and teacher, Louise Déry holds a doctorate in art history and has been director of the Galerie de l’Université du Québec à Montréal since 1997. She was previously on the curatorial staff of both the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Since the 1990s, she has worked with numerous artists including Dominique Blain, Raphaëlle de Groot, Antony Gormley, Nancy Spero, David Altmejd, Michael Snow, Daniel Buren, Giuseppe Penone and Sarkis. She has published more than 50 exhibition catalogues and recently produced an exhibition and a book with the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. She has been promoting the work of David Altmejd since 2000 and published the first monograph on the artist earlier this year (David Altmejd, Galerie de l’UQAM, 2006, 112 pp.). A solo exhibition she organized of Altmejd’s work will tour Canada in 2007.
The Galerie de l’UQAM
The Galerie de l’UQAM is a university gallery that produces and presents exhibitions of contemporary art from Quebec, the rest of Canada and abroad. The majority of these are directed by established curators. The gallery explores various themes related to the work of recognized professional artists, while remaining open to emerging currents and the work of students in visual and media arts, art history and museology. It promotes research and high-level specialty publishing, manages a program of public activities and organizes travelling exhibitions in Canada and abroad. It also has a mandate to conserve, manage and disseminate UQAM’s art collection. Located in the heart of downtown Montreal, in the Latin Quarter, surrounded by museums, artist-run centres, libraries, theatres, cinemas and cafés, the gallery welcomes not only the university community, but also the abundant wider public of downtown.
For further information
Audrey Genois, Galerie de l’UQAM
Téléphone : (514) 987-6150
www.galerie.uqam.ca
Photos: http://www.uqam.ca/nouvelles/2006/David-Altmejd-photos.htm
Source : Huguette Lucas, agente d'information
Division des relations avec la presse et événements spéciaux
Service des communications
Tél. : (514) 987-3000, poste 6832#
lucas.huguette@uqam.ca
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