Daniel Arsham’s art is an enigma that is resolved through contact with an exterior on which he draws for inspiration. By incorporating various aesthetic fields like landscape and architecture into the domain of art, he demonstrates how art wields power over other fields.

The means used belong exclusively to art—landscape painting, the chiseling and carving of sculpture, representation and collage. And despite the close relationship Arsham maintains with architecture and landscape, he always maintains a certain distance, thus ensuring a kind of continuity between his art and more traditional forms. We are witnessing a process in which art remains within its limitations, its codes, its mediums, and production and fabrication spaces. Arsham doesn’t venture into the landscape, nor does he intervene in terms of architecture. Instead, he senses, then harnesses the outdoors and brings it into his own personal venues of expression. He borrows from architecture and landscape as did, according to Japanese tradition, those who designed gardens and created the impression of expanding space by incorporating a faraway perspective, a temple, a mountain or a tree.

In adopting this approach, Arsham sees the schism as the crucial cog in his relationship to architecture—a relationship initially based on attraction, and then on repulsion. He attracts, captures, and integrates architectural constituents, then gradually pulls away by staging a kind of destruction. Through upheaval, intentional erosion and engulfment by a luxuriant nature reasserting its supremacy, the collapse of structures that have been ingeniously constructed highlights the triumph of the forces of art over architectural rationality. Art defies the cohesion of the architectonic structure when a column splits in two; defies the integrity of its image when an entire section of a facade collapses ; defies the continutity of the layout when unity of volume fragments in the set Arsham designed for Merce Cuningham.

Ensconced in vegetal proliferation, the “architectones” trigger aesthetic emotions brought on by classical ruins, such as melancholy, or a certain notion of the sublime borne by the impression of an impassive invasion, by nature’s slow and gradual labor. But most striking is the apparent longevity of architectonic forms, of geometry, of immaculate white. We see a ruin, but there is no erosion ; a ruin without the violence of contemporary destructive phenomena, whether natural or intentional. For evidently, these works coexist with the everyday tragedies imposed by the violence of terrorism, wars, natural catastrophes, urban development of major cities. But here everythings exudes a sense of slowness, the absence of conflict, of peace.

So it is definitely in this way that Arsham lays down the contours of a politico-cultural context that finds, in the forms created, a visual echo imitating, underscoring and exaggerating reality, even if indirectly.

DANIEL ARSHAM
“Five Crystal Eroded Payphones” 2013
Crystal, shattered glass, hydrostone / Cristal, verre brisé, hydrostone
24 x 81 x 9 inches / 61 x 205 x 23 cm
unique Credits: http://www.perrotin.com/

DANIEL ARSHAM
“Steel Eroded Polaroid” 2013
Steel fragments, shattered glass, hydrostone / Fragments de métal, verre brisé, hydrostone
6 x 5 1/8 x 6 inches / 15,5 x 13,5 x 15,5 cm
unique Credits:http://www.perrotin.com/

DANIEL ARSHAM
“Crystal Eroded Toy Phone” 2013
Crystal, shattered glass, hydrostone / Cristal, verre brisé, hydrostone
15 x 8 x 8 inches / 38 x 20,5 x 20,5 cm
unique Credits: http://www.perrotin.com/

DANIEL ARSHAM
“Pixel Cloud (Miami)” 2010
Plastic, paint / Plastique, peinture
35 1/2 inches x 8.6 feet x 55 1/4 inches / 90 x 260 x 140 cm
unique Credits: http://www.perrotin.com/

DANIEL ARSHAM
“Six erosions to the center (3)” 2010
Foam, plaster, paint / Polystyrène, plâtre, peinture
48 x 48 x 48 inches / 122 x 122 x 122 cm
unique Credits: http://www.perrotin.com/

DANIEL ARSHAM
“Crystal Eroded Movie Camera” 2013
Crystal, shattered glass, hydrostone / Cristal, verre brisé, hydrostone
19 1/2 x 29 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches / 49,5 x 75 x 24 cm
unique
Credits:http://www.perrotin.com/

DANIEL ARSHAM
“Ash Eroded 16mm Film Projector” 2013
Volcanic ash, shattered glass, hydrostone / Cendres volcaniques, verre brisé, hydrostone
26 x 31 x 10 inches / 66 x 78 x 25 cm
unique Credits: http://www.perrotin.com/

DANIEL ARSHAM
“#FUTUREARCHIVE”

20/11/2013 – 21/12/2013

HONG KONG – 50 CONNAUGHT ROAD CENTRAL

-via perrotin.com