Recent Exhibitions
Tobias Mueller Modern
12 June to 20 September — Zürich, Switzerland
This exhibition presents sculptures by the Brazilian artist that enter into dialogue with earlier works, offering a retrospective view of his multifaceted oeuvre. The show includes both new works and selected earlier pieces. Many of the exhibited sculptures refer to previous phases of his work in terms of motif or form, while others explore entirely new directions. Together, they form a layered panorama that brings the richness of Cemin’s artistic thinking into view.
Cemin’s work exists in a productive tension with art history: on the one hand, it reflects classical sculpture – from Greco-Roman antiquity through the Renaissance to Brancusi and Giacometti; on the other, it deconstructs traditional notions of form and sculptural autonomy. In his practice, Cemin combines figurative, abstract, and ornamental elements in unorthodox ways, enabling him to draw complex connections between art, philosophy, and science. His sculptures are thus never purely formal or illustrative, but always part of a broader metaphysical inquiry into the nature of the world and subjectivity. Cemin describes his creative process as a revelation of the self: “It’s impossible to create more than what you are. You can only unveil more of yourself.” (BOMB Magazine, 1994). This introspective approach is reflected in his sculptures, which often appear as poetic metamorphoses – organic, flowing, and at the same time, precisely constructed. Classical sculpture, architectural fragments, and imaginary forms overlap in them, forming works that are as visually engaging as they are intellectually resonant.
In many of his works, Cemin deliberately plays with the connotation of the aesthetic: He combines the sublime with the ridiculous, the graceful with the grotesque. This ambivalence lends his sculptures a peculiar tension – they are beautiful, but never pleasing; expressive, but never unambiguous. Figures such as the three-legged Ballerina, the bulging Double Duck or the over-dimensioned Spirit epitomise this oscillation between form and meaning. They reveal an understanding of sculpture that does not marginalise the changeable and contradictory, but rather makes it productive.Cemin’s work is held in major public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain in Paris, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and Inhotim in Brazil. His most important solo exhibitions include Directions at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington (1992), Resonances at the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City (2001), and Baroque Mirror at the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno in Gran Canaria (2013).
Text: Tobias Mueller Modern Art
David Gill Gallery
12 September to 4 October — London, United Kingdom
David Gill Gallery is pleased to announce the inaugural design exhibition by internationally acclaimed sculptor Saint Clair Cemin.
Retaining the artist's postmodern spirit whilst being inspired by nature, this selection marks nearly two decades of experimentation. The new collection of bronze works includes candle holders, seating, tables, and a chandelier. The series revolves around a sense of warmth that arises through storytelling, with whales dozing in the branches of trees, monkeys swinging through the air clutching books, and a chandelier stretches out like a spider’s web of bronze. “I decided to do something a little more fun,” says Cemin. “Animal comes from the word anima. It’s what gives soul to something, makes it animated. If it’s not animals that animate the work, the form has to do it.”
Cemin’s work often plays with a sense of elusive temporality, and as an artist he revels in the sense that we might not know what era his sculpture or design has come from. His work ‘Mercury Fountain’ in Virginia was installed in 1990 but is adorned with a mythological figure. “I like the idea of the lack of synchronicity. That you cannot know what time you’re living in,” says Cemin.
This is a spirit that has continued into the ‘rococo sauvage’ collection. “They could be antiques,” he adds. In these objets décoratifs there is also a sense of the artisanal or handmade. Cemin starts each design with many sketches and drawings, and for this collection each object was made at the same scale of its maquette. Despite their disparities in scale, Cemin is well known for his large-scale works, many of which animate public spaces, he does not create a sense of distinction between his sculptural and design work. “There is continuity. For me to make a sculpture or make a table, it’s the same thing,” he notes. “Da Vinci said that art lives off constraints and dies of excessive freedom. I find design difficult because of the challenge, but I like the challenge.”
Text: David Gill Gallery