Daniel Arsham | Circa 2345
Galerie Perrotin
909 Madison Ave, NYC
September 15 – October 22, 2016
Galerie Perrotin is presenting Daniel Arsham’s first solo exhibition, “Circa 2345,” in New York. The exhibition will feature sculptural pieces, breakthrough use of color as well as a large scale installation. This will be the artist’s eleventh show with Galerie Perrotin.
Daniel Arsham’s sculptural works are poetic constructions made up of juxtapositions of form and material: a 16mm film projector rendered in ash and hydrostone, or a 20th century iconic guitar, formed out of white glacial rock dust, its crumbling areas integral to its haunting beauty. Transforming compressed elemental materials such as stone, crystal and ash into carefully chosen important cultural artifacts, Arsham offers a brief glimpse into our current culture and its signifiers, as if seen far off into the future.
The poignant works reflect back to the viewer issues such as the fragility of human civilization and the ephemeral nature of time, ending up as potentially puzzling and mysterious as any rare figurine or pot unearthed at an archaeological site. Purposefully making craft a central aspect to his process, Arsham often allows errors from the molds or casts to come through, adding a layer of meaning, decay and depth to the work.
In this exhibition Arsham presents on the first floor new works from 2016, such as Blue Calcite Basketball Jersey, Blue Calcite Basketball Tower, andBlue Calcite Bulls Jacket amongst others. By using this particular crystalline calcite, each piece radiates an intense blue, the shock of color opening up Arsham’s artistic lexicon, a byproduct from his research and results into correcting his inherent colorblindness. Arsham introduces in this exhibition color in his sculptural work, as well as a combination of different elements, for the first time.
On the lower floor of the gallery, the viewer encounters an immersive architectural installation that hints, like much of the artist’s oeuvre, at a participant and potential narrative through absence. The piece is an expansion on Daniel Arsham’s previous works exploring archaeology, fiction and the collapsing of time.
ABOUT DANIEL ARSHAM
New York based artist Daniel Arsham straddles the line between art, architecture and performance. Raised in Miami, Arsham attended the Cooper Union in New York City where he received the Gelman Trust Fellowship Award in 2003. Architecture is a prevalent subject throughout his work; environments with eroded walls and stairs going nowhere, landscapes where nature overrides structures, and a general sense of playfulness within existing architecture. Arsham makes architecture do things it is not supposed to do, mining everyday experience for opportunities to confuse and confound our expectations of space and form. Simple yet paradoxical gestures dominate his sculptural work: a façade that appears to billow in the wind, a figure wrapped up in the surface of a wall, a contemporary object cast in volcanic ash as if it was found on some future archeological site.
