David Altmejd on his Tour-de-Force Surrealist Serpent

Though an intricate sprawling feat of both Maximalism and engineering, David Altmejd set out to create his latest tour-de-force sculpture The Serpent (2025) with little planning—opting instead to figure out his work’s meaning and form as he worked, letting his materials guide the way. Many of the best artists work this way: After all, if you already knew what a work was going to be, or could say in a few sentences what it means, why go through the hassle of making it at all? In the final form, which is on view at White Cube in New York through April 19, Altmejd’s process of play and exploration is abundantly evident. And though the Los Angeles–based Canadian artist works intuitively, he reflects thoughtfully all the while, learning from and dialoguing with his creative process—as captured in the interview below.

The process of making is always at the heart of my sculptures. That’s why I leave all the seams and traces of my hand untouched: I’m fascinated by how an object can carry the memory of its own making.

For the past few years, the snake has been slowly emerging in my work, shyly and subtly. I work very intuitively, so when I say things like “the snake emerged in my work,” I really believe that’s how it works. At first, I wasn’t ready to tackle such a loaded symbol. But recently, maybe because of where I was in my life, I became ready to face it.

I decided to make a snake from a series of heads. I had no idea what it was going to look like, the size that it was going to be. But I’ve been working on heads as long as I’ve been making sculptures. The process felt like making a necklace out of beads, putting pearls on a string one after the other.

Because I knew The Serpent was going to be unpredictable and chaotic, I decided first to make a sculpture called Snake Charmer (2025)as a kind of counterbalance. Snake Charmer was present in the studio, giving out calming vibes as the chaos was emerging. The sculpture shows the bust of a figure playing the flute multiplied 36 times, combined into a sort of grid.

Then I started working on The Serpent. At first, I imagined that all the heads making up the serpent would be identical. But very quickly, I learned that the limitations of the process [cast epoxy clay] meant that it would be better to let each head have its character. So I decided to push the work in that direction, making all the heads different. They’re all casts of my head, but sometimes, I changed the nose or made the head more feminine. Soon, it was as if the heads all symbolized different moments in a life. Stepping back, I could even see clear chapters: There’s a rise, there’s a fall, there’s a death, there’s decay, there’s a transformation. But as I said, I work very intuitively. So these are reflections that I have while I’m working, not ideas I’m trying to illustrate.

People have been asking me if The Serpent a self-portrait. I guess so, in certain ways. But I also wonder what defines a self-portrait: Does it have to be a conscious representation of the self? Because this wasn’t. Almost every sculpture I make starts with a cast of my own head, just for practical reasons.

I’m becoming more and more aware that whatever shape a sculpture takes results from a desire that’s in the material: The material always wants to be shaped a certain way. I think a lot about the unconscious as defined by Carl Jung, and think that maybe, there’s some an invisible energy in the material’s unconscious that’s just waiting for me to help it manifest.

Many people have described my work as Surrealist. In the past, I didn’t really understand this because in my mind, I understood Surrealism as more of a style. And sure, my work has weird stuff: animals, unpredictable objects. But I thought this was a superficial comparison, until I realized I’m doing exactly what the Surrealists were doing: letting the unconscious manifest.

That’s the fun of making the work: not knowing where it’s going to go, believing in the process, letting the material decide the shape. I love the unpredictability. I’m very comfortable with chaos. And I suspect chaos likes me too.

The show really began with the sculptures on view upstairs, of musicians playing swans as instruments. After making them, I thought: Oh, they could be playing music for dancers. So I made dancers, and I started to think that, as a sculptor, really I’m just playing music and making the material dance. I don’t want to impose a choreography on it. I want to let it find my rhythm.

In the corner of The Serpent’s plinth, a rabbit is peeking out of a hole. I’ve been working with rabbits for a few years. I started doing so because I’m always drawing on my sculptures, but with a human bust, cheeks and foreheads don’t leave room for big drawings. So I thought: If I made big rabbit ears, I could use them as a drawing surface.

Afterward, I realized that my connection with the rabbit is much deeper, dating back to my childhood. Soon, I became really interested in the rabbit as trickster—not necessarily as in a character that plays tricks, but as a sort of spirit that can both be in the world, and also go underground through a hole, navigating dark channels underground. In Alice in Wonderland, it’s the White Rabbit who leads Alice into her own unconscious, where she meets the Queen and all these characters. For me as an artist, that’s the most important tool I have: the ability to dig beneath the surface and to access the darker space of the unconscious—and then come back above ground.

—As told to Emily Watlington