Daniel Arsham: Moving Walls

Moving Walls is the second show by American artist Daniel Arsham (b. 1980, Cleveland) at Baró. For the exhibit, Ashram makes interventions in three of the gallery walls. In one of the works, “Corner Knot”, two of the walls gain unimaginable elasticity and come together in a knot. In “Formless Figure”, an indefinite spectrum is embossed onto another wall. Both these works are a provocation to the audience’s usual perception, achieved by the alteration of the original architecture of the venue – a regular procedure in his body of work. In Moving Walls, everyday spaces and forms are presented in unexpected ways. Arsham transforms familiar objects into surreal experiences, reinventing that which already exists. After all, “spaces are meaningless until someone is in them”, he says.

Daniel Arsham’s work draws a fine line between art, architecture and performance; spaces with eroded walls, stairs that lead to nowhere, landscapes where nature replaces structures have all made up his body of work. Arsham founded, along Alex Mustonen, ‘Snarkitecture’, an art project that focuses on the viewer’s experience, producing works that allow interaction and direct involvement of the audience with the space. Arsham has shown at PS1, New York; at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami; at The Athens Biennial in Athens, Greece; at The New Museum in New York; at Mills College Art Museum in Oakland, California; and at Carré d’Art in Nimes, France, to name a few.