Dean Millien and Jude Tallichet: Gleam

Artists Dean Millien and Jude Tallichet’s experiments in tin, aluminum, and foil conjure a herd of imaginary childhood companions and a world of broken objects teetering towards collapse. These shiny beginnings and endings are, by turns, beguiling, mesmerizing, mysterious, even campy. Objects that gleam are rare in nature and exert an outsize attraction: Birds collect them for their nests; humans will them into being from raw materials and hoard the shiny objects that result. Tallichet and Millien tap into this enduring fascination, revealing how even the humblest materials can become vessels for memory, imagination, and wonder.

For Tallichet, industrial aluminum foil emerged as a medium after years of working with mold making and casting. Seeking a material that would allow for greater immediacy and experimentation and less waste, she discovered that foil could be shaped directly over existing objects, capturing their forms while remaining flexible enough to be distorted, reworked, and transformed. She found the foil creates the same reflective luster as her earlier bronze and cast aluminum sculptures, yet the foil retains every touch, fold, and distortion, making the process visible.

Millien’s relationship to aluminum foil began much earlier. He has been creating sculptures from the material since the age of 3, when his father threw away all his toys for making too much noise. Drawing on cartoons, animals, popular culture, and the exuberance of childhood imagination, he has developed a singular sculptural language that transforms everyday material into fantastical creatures and unlikely heroes. Much of the work in this exhibition was created during a residency partnership between ArtYard and Studio Route 29.