Sculptor David Altmejd in his studio. © Tristan Lajarrige

David Altmejd describes himself as a medium—an interpreter and channel for the energies already embedded within the materials with which he works. It took years, but sculpture gradually revealed itself to him as a vehicle for both transcendence and inquiry—moving in and out of science and the physical structure of materials, in and out of human creativity and artistry. Those energies, he maintains, can be shaped into forms that echo existing symbologies and archetypes drawn from a collective unconscious. Observer met with the visionary Canadian artist during a whirlwind Los Angeles Art Week and ahead of his major solo exhibition at White Cube New York (his first in the city in over a decade) to discuss the sources behind his work and how his process leans toward alchemy, Jungian excavation of the unconscious and allowing forms and symbologies to surface on their own terms.

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It all comes down to particles, he says—those elemental units that arrange themselves into remarkably ordered structures, shaping our perception of what we call reality, only to be retranslated into symbolic forms and figures. Creation is about becoming a catalyst or a conduit for the new circulation of matter and energy. “There is a connection between matter and mother,” the artist says as we discuss the show’s central piece, which is still in his studio, waiting to be completed before following his other works to New York. “My hand has the potential to give what is invisible a form. I’m just at the intersection between the invisible and physical reality, and all I’m doing is letting those invisible energies work through me. I’m not really the one deciding what form they’re going to have. They decide what form they’re going to have. That’s something that I’m becoming more and more aware of.”

© Observer