Daniel Arsham: Materials and Process

New York-based artist Daniel Arsham work explores the fields of fine art, architecture, performance, design, and film. Raised in Miami, Arsham attended The Cooper Union where he received the Gelman Trust Fellowship Award in 2003. Soon thereafter Arsham toured worldwide with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as the company’s stage designer. The experience lead to an ongoing collaborative practice which continues as Arsham works with world-renowned artists, musicians, designers, and brands.

Arsham’s uchronic aesthetics revolves around his concept of fictional archaeology. Working in sculpture, architecture, drawing and film, he creates and crystallizes ambiguous in-between spaces or situations, and further stages what he refers to as future relics of the present. Always iconic, most of the objects that he turns into stone refer to the late 20th century or millennial era, when technological obsolescence unprecedentedly accelerated along with the digital dematerialization of our world. While the present, the future, and the past poetically collide in his haunted yet playful visions between romanticism and pop art, Arsham also experiments with the timelessness of certain symbols and gestures across cultures.

In 2008, Arsham co-founded Snarkitecture with architect and fellow Cooper Union graduate Alex Mustonen AR’05. Snarkitecture is a collaborative design practice established to investigate the boundaries between the disciplines of art and architecture. Snarkitecture focuses on the reinterpretation of everyday materials, structures andprograms to new and imaginative effect. The studio’s work includes installations, architectural environments and objects for a diverse range of clients such as Seletti, Calvin Klein, COS, Kith, and more.

Arsham’s work has been shown at PS1 (New York); The Museum of Contemporary Art (Miami); and The New Museum (New York) among others. Arsham is represented by Galerie Perrotin in Paris, Hong Kong, New York, Seoul, Shanghai, and Tokyo. Arsham also shows with Baro Galeria (Sao Paulo); Ron Mandos (Amsterdam); and Nanzuka Gallery (Tokyo).