Together titled ‘The Nymphs’. Nymph 1, Nymph 2 and Nymph 3 (2025) by David Altmejd are at once arresting and elusive. Three life-size bronze figures, each in mid-motion, appear to float – their arms extended, dresses swirling, as if caught in a gust of wind or in the throes of a dance. But linger a moment and you’ll notice a friction between their graceful poses and the sculpture’s rough texture. Surfaces that look fluid from afar, up close are pitted, gouged and raw: evidence of Altmejd’s hand and his instinct for material experimentation.

The figures draw on the myth of the nymph: an elemental being tied to nature, transformation and desire. Altmejd’s nymphs, however, are less classical muses than ecstatic forces in flux. There’s something feral, almost unstable, about them, as if caught between formation and disintegration, beauty and wildness. This tension is central to Altmejd’s practice, which often explores how the body, identity and form can morph, fracture and rebuild.

Originally sculpted in clay before being cast in bronze, the work retains an expressive immediacy to which Altmejd refers as ‘chaos in service of creation’. Nymphs is part of a larger body of work, including his ‘Bodybuilder’ and ‘Watcher’ series, where figures exist in a perpetual state of becoming. For Altmejd, form is never final; it’s always reaching toward something else, unravelling even as it coalesces.

Standing among these three figures, one feels not just the presence of movement, but their potential to shift, change shape or vanish altogether.