Exhibition Details

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, the collection marks nearly two decades of experimentation.
The new collection of bronze works includes five 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 stretching 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 as 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.”