Collections Detail

Artist: David Altmejd
Title: Le Berger
Dimensions and medium: Wood, plywood, rigid polyethylene foam, expanded polyurethane foam, horsehair, crystals, paint, iron and brass wire, and glass beads, 373.4 × 152.4 × 129.5 cm
Artwork description: David Altmejd’s series of “giants” began an exploration of verticality that provides contrast to his previous architectural, mostly horizontal works. Colossal and disarming, Le Berger radically disrupts the conventions of scale around sculptural representations of the human body. The monumental work takes on a hybrid nature that oscillates between fullness and emptiness, shifting between the idea of being as a contained form, or as an environment where our imagination may freely circulate, namely via the circular staircases that enter and exit the sculpture’s body. The titanic, mythical figure of the giant slowly dissipates as one approaches it. Lost in the richness of its juxtaposed materials (wood, horse hair, crystals, paint, glass beads, etc.), Le Berger becomes a space to explore, a landscape, a universe even, through which the gaze eagerly navigates.

David Altmejd