SAINT CLAIR CEMIN
“Fotini” 2013
Corten steel, glass, 300 x 150 x 100 cm
The name Fotini is the Greek equivalent of the feminine name Lucia, meaning light, or in Greek “phos” (φως). Cemin explains that light impinges on our eyes and our consciousness like a constant hammering, although we only become aware of it through its result; images in the consciousness.
A huge hammer that at the same time seems to aim at the horizon and wants to shatter the glass box that contains it. Cemin explains that his titles are an integral part of the work because it is its explicit verbal component. What is said plays with what is seen, and what is seen is already a combination of materials, figurations, and forms that come into agreement as well as conflict.
“Father” 2021
Bronze, steel and wood, 300 x 300 x 100 cm
A Sunday shoe in a cage, like a beast in a zoo: this work continues Cemin’s project, which among other things retrieves styles from the past by giving them new functions. In this case we can see Surrealism manifesting itself in an enigmatic piece, which offers itself as a portrait of his father, or a symbol of patriarchy. As this is a philosophical work, it enters the tradition of art as a “thinking machine”, or a generator of concepts. Explanations, in this case, would only come at the expense of the imaginative process of the audience, which always participates in formulating the meaning of a work. The awareness of this participation is the essence of conceptual art, which therefore automatically makes it supra-conceptual.
Saint Clair Cemin
Cruz Alta, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, 1951
He currently lives and works in Woodbury, Connecticut, USA and Chalkida, Greece
www.saintclaircemin.net
His work spans a variety of styles, approaches, and materials. Ranging from furniture to toys in popular culture to the history of sculpture. His work, despite its material sensuality and use of artisanship, has a serious conceptual basis that allows the artist unlimited scope for his imagination.
As a teenager, Cemin became interested in philosophy due to contact and exchange with intellectuals in his hometown, Cruz Alta. Once emersed in philosophy and physics, he began to focus his attention on art, eventually drawing and working on illustrations for magazines. Cemin studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, from 1975 to 1978, where he studied printmaking for three years. He moved to New York soon after, where he experimented in art forms until he discovered sculpture in 1983. One of the artist’s first exhibited sculptures was The Granny Ashtray, which was described as an anti-modernist piece. Throughout the 1980s, Cemin became an integral part of NYC’s East Village art scene, which included a circle of important contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons, Peter Halley, and Jonathan Lasker.
Following successful years as a sculptor in New York, Cemin traveled to Egypt, Bali, and China where he had a studio for 15 years. Finally, he established a studio and secondary residence in Greece, the cradle of our civilization. For 27 years he maintained a large studio in Brooklyn, NY until his move to Woodbury in 2021.
His works are in permanent exhibition in important institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, The Broad, The Whitney Museum, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris. His monumental works can be found in Sweden, Norway, the United States, and Brazil.
