David Altmejd: The Flux and The Puddle, Louisiana

Canadian artist David Altmejd has created a museum within the museum: a 50m2 installation comprising figures and objects formed from wax, mirrors, plaster, acrylic paint, latex, feathers, ceramics, ink, wood, steel wire and quartz. Some pieces are half-animal, half-vegetal hybrids, spliced by boxes and moving among the installation – playing with the museum’s architecture and notions of control.

Contained within a huge number of display cabinets, the installation is scientific archive meets cabinet of curiosities, meets bizarre surrealist film set. Forcing the viewer to walk around and gaze through, the piece challenges the body and movement within the museum space while also incorporating digital, technological and ecological aspects to remind the audience of their position in the world as a whole.

Almejd intends to evoke both dreamlike and nightmarish experience, whilst anchoring the piece in contemporary technology and museum display: it is an uncanny connection to reality. With filmic influences of David Cronenberg and David Lynch, the work seems constantly in flux as hierarchies and objects shift according to the gaze of the viewer – each creating their own version of The Flux and The Puddle.

David Altmejd: The Flux and The Puddle, until 31 January 2016,  Louisiana, Gl Strandvej 13, 3050 Humlebæk, Denmark

Find out more: www.en.louisiana.dk.

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Credits
1. David Altmejd: The Flux and The Puddle, installation view. Courtesy of Louisiana.