Daniel Arsham: Circa 2345

Galerie Perrotin presents Daniel Arsham’s first exhibition 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 artefacts, 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 civilisation and the ephemeral nature of time, ending up as potentially puzzling and mysterious as any rare figurine or pot unearthed at an archeological site.
Purposefully making craft a central aspect to his process, Arsham often allows errors from the moulds 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, and Blue 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 archeology, fiction and the collapsing of time.