Saint Clair Cemin | Vortex | 2008

Saint Clair Cemin roots his artistic life in the two years he spent living with his family on a 5,000 acre ranch in a remote part of Brazil. The family lived like pioneers, without electricity or running water, a dream for many kids. He has lived a nomadic life as an adult, sampling from global cultures, past and present, and translating them so they are legible to our contemporary world. Cemin was part of the roiling, dynamic world of New York’s East Village in the 1980s, where a new generation of Conceptual artists focused on ideas, not objects. Cemin always strayed, however, since he is grounded in making beautiful objects that live beyond ideas. 

Cemin’s Vortex is a shiny tornado of energy turned upside down. Its mirrored surfaces reflect the street life around it. Cemin began working with craftspeople in Beijing in 1999 for their ability to patiently pound out the seams of works in stainless steel, like Vortex. One might imagine that the artist thinks about the distance between the rancho in Brazil and the major global cities in which he has lived—Beijing, Paris, New York—and the vortex of life that exists in each place.