David Altmejd

For MADE UP the artist continues his long-standing preoccupation with myth, folklore and science fiction in The Holes – two vast giants that transform gallery into lair. Architectural, fragmented, violent, decorative, anthropomorphic and yet periodically dissolving into abstraction, they are cohesive forms rooted somewhere within popular imagination, yet representing so much more. The body of one is severed at the waist, its trailing innards spiralling into an abyss suggested in the title. Amidst the carnage, in contrast, life (and even after-life) bursts through in the form of plants, a mirrored stairway and mirrored quartz-like clusters that grow towards the sky.

Highly detailed, the bodies of the giants become multiple stage sets with meta-narratives running throughout. In a sense, the entire structure functions as a mirror, reflecting bold, universal constructs and preoccupations – order, chaos, birth, death, destruction, life and renewal, love, horror, battle and rest. Altmejd seeks to present a scene that is at once plausible and fantastical, creating exuberant worlds that stretch the imagination yet are somehow weirdly recognisable through legends from a remote past.