David Altmejd, ‘Nymph 1 Nymph 2 Nymph 3’, 2025
Presented by White Cube
Presented by White Cube
Listen to David Altmejd's Audio Guide
David Altmejd, Nymph 1 Nymph 2 Nymph 3, 2025
Presented by White Cube
David Altmejd’s Nymphs are at once arresting and elusive. Three life-size bronze figures, each in mid-motion, appear to float – their arms extended, dresses swirling, as if caught in a gust of wind or in the throes of a dance. But linger a moment and you’ll notice a friction between their graceful poses and the sculpture’s rough texture. Surfaces that look fluid from afar, up close are pitted, gouged and raw: evidence of Altmejd’s hand and his instinct for material experimentation.
The figures draw on the myth of the nymph: an elemental being tied to nature, transformation and desire. Altmejd’s nymphs, however, are less classical muses than ecstatic forces in flux. There’s something feral, almost unstable, about them, as if caught between formation and disintegration, beauty and wildness. This tension is central to Altmejd’s practice, which often explores how the body, identity and form can morph, fracture and rebuild.
Originally sculpted in clay before being cast in bronze, the work retains an expressive immediacy to which Altmejd refers as ‘chaos in service of creation’. Nymphs is part of a larger body of work, including his ‘Bodybuilder’ and ‘Watcher’ series, where figures exist in a perpetual state of becoming. For Altmejd, form is never final; it’s always reaching toward something else, unravelling even as it coalesces.
Standing among these three figures, one feels not just the presence of movement, but their potential to shift, change shape or vanish altogether.
Listen to David Altmejd's Audio Guide
About David Altmejd
David Altmejd, Nymph 2, 2025. Courtesy: the artist and White Cube
David Altmejd (b.1974, Montréal; lives and works in Los Angeles) studied at the University of Québec and graduated with an MFA from Columbia University, New York in 2001. His numerous international exhibitions include a major survey exhibition ‘Flux’, which travelled from Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris to MUDAM in Luxembourg and the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal (2014–15). In 2007, he represented Canada at the 52nd Venice Biennale with his installation The Index, and he has also been included in the 13th Kaunas Biennial (2021); Liverpool Biennial (2008); Whitney Biennial, New York (2004) and the 8th Istanbul Biennial (2003).
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Main Image: David Altmejd, Nymph 1 Nymph 2 Nymph 3, 2025. Photo: Linda Nylind
