-What makes sculpture different from every other art form
is the fact that it exists as an object
in the same space as the viewer.
It has the same presence in the world.
In my mind, it sort of potentially functions
like the body, like the body of a person.
It's a finite object, but it contains infinity.
♪♪
My name is David Altmejd.
I was born in Montreal, grew up in Montreal.
I moved to New York to go to art school,
and I lived in New York for 20 years
and I just recently moved to Los Angeles.
I make sculpture and objects.
That's what I do.
So the figure that I'm working on
is going to be holding a rabbit.
I don't really know what the shape
and the position of the rabbit is going to be,
so I'm adding material. This is expandable foam.
There's something kind of random about the way
that it takes shape and it grows so that if I don't know
exactly what the shape is going to be beforehand,
this is sort of deciding by itself what it's going to be.
So that's what I use. I just add a little bit at a time
and then I let it grow the way that it wants to grow.
I need to work on the face. It's too rough,
and I'm going to -- it's not to my taste,
so I'm just going to use paint and colors
to help me decide where it's going.
I started art school as a painter.
I mean, that's what I had been doing
all my life growing up, you know, drawing and 2-D work.
So while I was at art school,
there were a few mandatory classes that I had to take.
Sculpture I, that was the first time I had to make an object,
and as soon as I made something,
I just realized that it had a relationship to the world,
and, to me, that was, like,
different from everything I had ever done.
You know, it seemed like something
that was potentially more alive,
you know, that was sort of, like,
breathing the same air as I did, you know?
These are hands that I've been casting.
They're the hands that I'm using in the piece.
That's one hand. And there's also a rabbit ear.
Now I'm going to pour some new ones.
I use different sculptural strategies to try to recreate
that kind of infinite aspect that the body might have.
It can be in giving it a lot of layers.
So it just feels like the object contains a history.
In the back. This is the back.
It's taking too much time,
so I think I'm going to be more radical,
and I'm just going to use a Sawzall.
I'm pretty rough when I work. I let myself be rough.
Sometimes I'm impatient, and I just want things to move.
I work intuitively,
and it might look like I don't know what I'm doing,
but I like alternating between moments of roughness
and then moments of gentleness.
And I layer things like that so that the sculpture at the end
is full of layers of different types of gestures
that are rough and gentle and rough and gentle.
It gives it a history.
It gives the object a sort of, like, history of energies
where the viewer ends up feeling it.
This is epoxy clay, and that's the material
that I use the most.
It comes in two parts and you have to mix them together
and there's a chemical reaction
and it hardens after a few hours.
I just put it in the microwave because it softens it
and it's easier to mix.
I'll use it just to attach the ears.
I realize that when I make sculpture,
I'm kind of really comfortable in chaos.
Of course, I mean, part of what defines art, right,
is that there has to be a certain order in it.
Otherwise, it wouldn't be anything.
If it was just completely chaotic,
it wouldn't be anything.
You know, it has to be framed a certain way.
I like my decisions to come out of chaos
and then I like to sort of.
Put some order in it and then go back to chaos
and then put some order
and layer things like that, you know?
I'm trying to decide to where the head of the rabbit
is going to be located.
I think I like the idea that the eyes of the rabbit
would be in the cent-- would be centered with the piece
as if it was a kind of heart or something.
I am very aware of symmetry and I try to respect it
or the other way completely.
And I feel like there's a difference.
I mean, like, objects that are symmetrical, for me,
there's something more sacred about them.
I was just thinking about the symmetry in churches
or cathedrals. It feels sacred.
The architecture is based on the shape of a cross.
The shape of a cross itself is defined
by the shape of the body.
So when you're entering a church, for example,
you're kind of entering a body, in a certain way.
I'm not even Catholic, Christian,
but I love the whole imagery and some symbolism of it.
I guess it's always something that I'm looking for
whenever I make a sculpture.
It's that sacred aspect.
I think that the foam that I want to use
for the -- for the rabbit
is dry enough that I can start installing things on it.
So there's something about the position of the body
and the position of the head that includes the eye,
that's not really realistic.
So the only way to do that is to have the body
sort of facing the viewer, but the head tilted like that.
So I don't know how I can do -- I don't --
it's going to be weird, but I'm into it.
[ Chuckles ]
In order for something to be alive,
you have to not know where it's going, you have to not know.
You know, it's just like a person
you can't figure out a person.
I mean, like, people are infinitely complex, you know?
A piece that I'm very, very, very happy with.
I made a portrait of my sister.
I feel like I sort of
almost touched that infinity that I was talking about.
I just feel like I almost found God through it.
The next step is to finish assembling the rabbit ears,
the extra hands,
and once I have all these things assembled and it's solid,
then the main structure of the sculpture
is going to be, like, finished,
and I'll be able to focus on the subtle changes.
And if I want to add
a few elements there or whatever,
but it's going to be --
the main structure is going to be finished,
which is...
...which is good.
I mean, there's only a few days to --
to work on the piece, so...
This is a type of epoxy that I like using for skin.
I use it as a type of glue also.
So I'm going to be using it to glue the hair.
And in this case, for this sculpture,
I'm using my own hair.
A few weeks ago, I just trimmed off my whole COVID hair,
and -- and I'm using it for the sculpture.
I use a lot of different materials,
some of them are just for practical reasons,
just because they're -- they're easy to work with.
I like the combination of different types of materials.
I like materials that feel fake and cheap, you know,
like certain plastics mixed with materials
that are, like, bronze or quartz crystals.
I like plastic flowers but real hair.
This is the last bit of hair
that I have, and I'm missing a lot.
So I'm going to have to find another solution
to fill [chuckles] -- to fill the rest of the -- the head.
See, like, this is fake hair.
It's pretty close to the -- the color.
Alright, it looks pretty messy like that,
but, you know, I-I end up cleaning it --
cleaning it up, and, yeah, so I've already -- you know,
I've used all the hair that I had.
♪♪
I'm just making a connection between the hands and the bust
so to solidify everything and then afterwards
I'll probably hide this.
Or not.
Just looks like a very short arm, but...
There's not a lot of control in my work.
It's mostly coming from an intuitive place.
There's moments of control, you know,
especially towards the end when I start realizing that
the sculpture is going to end up being presented in the world.
Then I have to sort of somehow piece things together
so that the object feels presentable.
The fact that it's difficult to put your finger on things
is actually a quality.
There's something exciting about being confronted with something
and not knowing what you're supposed to make
of it intellectually, you know?
♪♪