David Altmejd’s Surreal Art Takes Center Stage at Xavier Hufkens

David Altmejd‘s fantastical creations occupy a lucid state, where reality and fiction intersect. The human body and decay are recurring themes that the Canadian artist often touches on in his anthropomorphic sculptures, which appear as if a character from Alice in Wonderland (1951) stepped into an eerie live action film.

This fall, Altmejd will unveil a comprehensive survey of work at Xavier Hufkens in Brussels. Housed at the gallery’s Rivoli location, the eponymously titled show spans sculpture, painting and installation, from grotesque busts and human figures that appear to be deteriorating in live time, to entrancing mixed-media worlds, such as The Flux and the Puddle (2014), a plexiglass labyrinth filled with intricate figures made with faux fur, body parts and resin — part ecosystem, laboratory and fairytale land where severed limbs, animal parts and technology fuse.

“Energy” is the word that Altmejd has used to describe his work. There is energy, both in the process of making art and the materials that take on life of its own. “I use intuition to feel like the work can open itself to meaning,” Altmejd previously told David Kordansky Gallery. “It’s not something I can control. I have to feel that what I do has symbolic potential, or if there is narrative, it has to feel like it has a narrative potential. In a certain way, you can say that I fetishize potential. Maybe the most defining thing in my work is that it represents the fetishization of potential.”

For those in Brussels, Altmejd’s latest exhibition will open on November 22 and run through February 8, 2025.

Xavier Hufkens
Rue Saint-Georges 107,
1050 Ixelles, Belgium