About the Exhibition
Awkward yet elegant, David Altmejd’s werewolf heads are carefully crafted sculptural objects that explore notions of attraction and repulsion. In their frequent appearances in fairy tales, Greek mythology, and Hollywood B-movies, werewolves trigger feelings of sympathy and horror. In his gallery installations, Altmejd (b.1974, Montreal, Canada) depicts these creatures—part-human and part-beast—as decaying objects, often installing them within mirrored, modernist sculptural settings. For Central Park, Altmejd has created two oversized werewolf heads, each encrusted with glitter, pearls, and sparkling rhinestones and crystals. These heads, at once seductive and macabre, are installed in two Plexiglas cases, apparently preserving them in two starkly different stages of decomposition. Installed at a bucolic location in the northern end of Central Park, Altmejd’s werewolf sculptures present the viewer with a melancholy, novel example of contemporary sculpture.