Saint Clair CEMIN
BIO
Saint Clair Cemin (born 1951) is a Brazilian sculptor and painter. He lives and works in New York City. His work encompasses multiple styles, approaches, and materials, from furniture to toys in popular culture to the history of sculpture. His work in despite of its sensual materiality and a keenness to craft, has a serious conceptual grounding which allows the artist an unlimited reach to his imagination.
Cemin became interested in philosophy as a teenager through inspirational conversations with intellectuals in his home town. Once interested in philosophy and physics, he began to focus his attention on art, drawing and working on illustrations for magazines. Cemin studied at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, from 1975-1978 where he learned printmaking for three years. He moved to New York shortly after, where he experimented in several fields as a way of earning an income. `One of the artist's first exhibited sculpture was Granny Ashtray, which has been described as an anti-modernist piece. Throughout the 1980s Cemin became an integral part of NY's east village art scene which included a circle of important contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons, Peter Halley and Jonathan Lasker. After those formative years in NYC Cemin travelled to Egypt, to China, to Bali, to Greece, to pursue sculpture in different environments and with different mediums.
After 2010 he returned to NY and continues to create sculptural works in his Brooklyn studio. In 2012 he had a major public exhibition of works along Broadway in Manhattan. Of the several works exhibited on Broadway one "vortex" at the corner of 57th street and Broadway, stood some 40 feet tall. His works are on permanent exhibition at important institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, The Broad, The Whitney Museum and more than 20 other museums and institutions worldwide.] He has also published a book of his writings through Edgewise Press titled, Fragments of a Mind: Stories and Comments on Art 1987-2004. Another book with his writings; “De ma Main Gauche”, will be published by the “Editions des Beaux Arts” in Paris, 2016;
Saint Clair Cemin is married to Svetlana Jovanovic Cemin and is the father of Sara who attends the Lycée Francais in NY