Daniel Arsham is a Cleveland-born, New York-based artist whose interdisciplinary artistic endeavours extend beyond traditional art world platforms. Arsham's work plays with the concept of future history and fictional archaeology, presenting fossilised versions of contemporary objects and architecture.
Read MoreRaised in Miami, Daniel Arsham attended The Cooper Union in New York. He graduated and received the Gelman Trust Fellowship award in 2003. His ensuing practice has crossed the disciplines of drawing, film, sculptures, installation, and architecture, playfully historicising the tangible cultural and material icons of the contemporary era.
Arsham's sculptural work presents eroded casts of various objects from the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The casts, made from geological material like sand, selenite, and volcanic ash, appear as if artefacts unearthed after being buried for centuries—haunting future relics of the contemporary.
Arsham's chosen objects for simulated ahistorical fossilisation include older televisions, cameras, and boomboxes that highlight the acceleration of technological obsolesce in this digital age. He also presents casts of soft toys, clothing, basketballs, books, and even full-scale luxury cars. Additionally, human figures in contemporary outfits appear, in various states of decay, from fragments to whole fossils—evoking discoveries at sites like Pompeii.
Architecture is another core element of Daniel Arsham's practice, where the artist often plays with the architectural environment of the gallery. In several works, artefacts and objects intersect with the walls of the exhibition space. The analogue clock in Falling Clock (2011), for example, appears to have been lodged into a softened gallery wall. He also constructs surreal architectural environments, such as the monochrome Japanese zen gardens of Blue Garden (2017) and Lunar Garden (2017).
Beyond the gallery walls, Daniel Arsham has a long history of sustained collaboration. Arsham founded Snarkitecture—'a highly acclaimed design practice'—in 2007 with Alex Mustonen. In 2014 he established 'Film the Future', creating films set in a fictional future civilisation.
Daniel Arsham's collaborative practice has also extended to set design for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company—including for the company's last performance ever—and the Athens Hellenic Festival. He has signed to Adidas, created and sold a range of functional design objects, collaborated with Dior and Pharrell Williams, and in 2020 he became creative director for the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA team in his home state of Ohio.
Daniel Arsham's art has enjoyed great success, showing in commercial contexts as well as gallery and institutional shows worldwide. His works feature in major public collections, such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; and the Blanton Museum of Art collection at the University of Texas at Austin.
Daniel Arsham has been presented in numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, including A Ripple in Time, Nanzuka Underground, Tokyo (2022); 31st Century Still Lives, Perrotin Tokyo (2022); Relics in the Landscape, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2022); Bronze Garden, 180 The Strand, London (2021); Moonraker, Carte Blanche à Daniel Arsham, Musée Guimet, Paris (2020); "3018", Perrotin New York (2018); and The Future Was Then, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2016).
Group exhibitions featuring Daniel Arsham work include Invento, OCA, São Paulo (2015); Painting the Glass House: Artists Revisit Modern Architecture, Mills College Art Museum, Oakland (2009); Projections, Carré d'art de Nîmes, France (2009); Heaven, 2nd Athens Biennale (2009); Greater New York, MoMA PS1, Long Island (2005); and Miami Nice, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris (2004).
Daniel Arsham has also performed at museums including New Museum (2009) and Musée d'Art Contemporain, Marseille, France (2010). In 2011, as well as designing the set of RECESS for the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts, he performed the piece in collaboration with Jonah Bokaer.
Michael Irwin | Ocula | 2021
