DANIEL ARSHAM
Born in Cleveland, Ohio (US) in 1980. Arsham graduated from the Cooper Union in 2003. He marked his debut series “Fictional Archaeology “, which he created sculptures and installations based on an idea of taking objects of our present day, petrified, weathered, and crystallized as if they had been around for thousands of years. Imagine oneself being an archaeologist in the future and looking at these objects. These “future relics”, through long geological time frame, lose their original color. As Arsham is colorblind, majority of his works are in white or in shades of grey. In addition to his fine art practice, Arsham has collaborated with many well-known brands, including DIOR and Adidas. His works also belong in the collections of contemporary art museums such as Centre Pompidou (Paris) and Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, US), and were exhibited in international art fairs and art museums.
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Title: Still Life with Eroded Bust of Diana the Huntress, Sneaker and Porsche
Year: 2022
Medium: acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 152.4 x 127 cm (60 x 50 in.) -
Title: Bronze Stainless Steel Venus Italica Bust
Year: 2021
Medium: Bronze, stainless steel, wooden pedestal
Dimensions: 162.5 x 51 x 61 cm (64 x 20 x 24 in.) -
Title: Future Relic Eroded Telephone
Year: 2020
Medium: Hydrostone and quartz crystals, hourglass, gloves with original case
Dimensions: 14 × 20.3 × 24.2 cm (5 1/2 × 8 × 9 1/2 in.) -
Title: Eroded Carrera RS
Year: 2021
Medium: resin, plaster, aluminium oxide
Dimensions: 10 × 30.1 × 12.4 cm (3 7/8 x 11 7/8 x 4 7/8 in.)
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Still Life with Eroded Bust of Diana the Huntress, Sneaker and Porsche
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Year: 2022This work is from Arsham’s debut series of oil paintings. Despite depicting content consisting of contemporary objects, the style follows the genre of typical still-life painting. The goddess of Diana from Roman mythology (Artemis in Greek mythology), Nike sneakers, a Porsche model, an apple, a catalog from the design company Nendo, a withered bouquet of flowers – all elements rendered in blue, with sepia and gray accentuating the rest. These hues perhaps symbolize the colors within Arsham’s vision, influenced by his color blindness. Guided by Arsham’s intent, viewers interpret according to the order and colors depicted in this painting - specifically the blue objects, followed by the sepia-toned playing cards, hourglass, the fallen bottle, and the beaker. Diana signifies three aspects in the celestial world, on earth and hell: moon, chastity, and magic. The apple is a symbol of original sin, and books symbolize knowledge and learning. The Porsche presumably symbolizes wealth and success. The most emphasized element in this work might be the withering flowers. The composition of this work must have been a vanitas as the transience of life and death is depicted. Skull, which is popular to be included in vanitas, and withered flowers have a direct symbolic imagery of death. Life is limited and one must engage in hard work due to original sin. A 9 of clubs playing card is depicted in the center of the painting, which signifies intellectual inquisitiveness and anxiety in Western fortune telling. This work is Arsham’s original aesthetic of “Fictional Archeology”. To comprehend this work as a whole, the audience must interpret the allegory of the contemporaneity and fictitious characteristics in Arsham’s still life painting presented as vanitas.
Medium: acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 152.4 x 127 cm (60 x 50 in.)
Acquired from Perrotin, 2022
Past Exhibitions
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- 2022 Art Collaboration Kyoto
https://a-c-k.jp/
- 2022 Art Collaboration Kyoto
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Bronze Stainless Steel Venus Italica Bust
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Year: 2021This work is from Arsham’s “Fictional Archaeology” series. Known for his desolate dystopian style, Arsham used plaster to create installations that imitate white collapsing ruins and relics, and even sculptures that look like “bleached” Pokémons. Intentionally skipping the “present” on time axis, his works suggest a transcending perspective of looking back to the “past” from the “future “. The title “Venus Italica” of this work was a classical variant of Venus statue that Napoleon Bonaparte commissioned Antonio Canova to create in the 19th century, who was one of the most prominent neoclassical sculptors of the time. Plaster replicas of the head are extensively produced and are generally inexpensive. Materials used in this sculpture – metal (bronze and stainless steel), is rarely found in Arsham’s works. The reason for this is that because “plaster” was used on the original statue to nullify the texture and color of the reference, it was necessary for Arsham to create with a material that is entirely different from such medium. This is certainly a promising work that marks the beginning of a new chapter derived from “Fictional Archaeology”.
Medium: Bronze, stainless steel, wooden pedestal
Dimensions: 162.5 x 51 x 61 cm (64 x 20 x 24 in.)
Acquired from PERROTIN, 2022
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DANIEL ARSHAM x DiorFuture Relic Eroded Telephone
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Year: 2020The motif of this work is the telephone that once sat on Christian Dior’s work desk, looking back at Dior’s heritage a thousand years from now. The term “eroded” means the crystals being crystallized when they have been shattered by corrosion. It takes an immeasurable time for the crystals to form, along with the heat of the lava and the pressure within the atmosphere of Earth. Why is there an hourglass included in the “Eroded” series? It is because Arsham’s works always ramble through eternity. How many times does a small hourglass have to be measured to reach a thousand years? We would not have grasped Arshams’s imaginations without fantasizing about a timeline that is far beyond human time.
Medium: Hydrostone and quartz crystals, hourglass, gloves with original case
Dimensions: 14 × 20.3 × 24.2 cm (5 1/2 × 8 × 9 1/2 in.)
Edition: No.** of 250
Acquired from SBI Art Auction, 2022
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Eroded Carrera RS
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Year: 2021This is a Porsche from an edition work of the “Eroded” series, referencing the 1973 produced “Porsche 911 Carrera RS2.7” which is still extremely popular ever since its debut 40 years ago. Arsham imitates the “decay” of the subject as if it had gone through the passage of time. As the title suggests, “Eroded” is a series of installations with “corrosion” as the theme, with the collapsed portion crystallized as a characteristic. Rather than simply decaying, the composition seems to undergo a process of replacement. While the expression of corrosion is deliberately employed to exemplify a collapsing image, nonetheless, perhaps he is trying to demonstrate that it is essentially timeless regardless of material replacement. Arsham's sincere respect for history is predominantly in accordance with the same series. As the artist exemplified in the concept of “Fictional Archeology”, even though the appearance is collapsing to the extent that the color is lost over time, the value of fundamental existence such as its spirit remains.
Medium: resin, plaster, aluminium oxide
Dimensions: 10 × 30.1 × 12.4 cm (3 7/8 x 11 7/8 x 4 7/8 in.)
Edition: #406 of 500
Acquired from Perrotin, 2022
Past Exhibitions
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- 2022 Art Collaboration Kyoto
https://a-c-k.jp/
- 2022 Art Collaboration Kyoto