daniel arsham’s fictional archeology · 2016. 3. 9. · what was the last flash of graflex...
TRANSCRIPT
D a n i e l a r s h a m ’ sF i c t i o n a l a r c h e o l o g y
m a r c Q u i n n , 2 0 1 5
Is that the past or the future holding the line in the sculpture Payphone? The handset sitting,
waiting, waiting, waiting for the caller who will never return. Is it the past calling the future,
the future calling the past or the here calling the now?
What’s on Cassette Tape?
What fateful day was announced through Pill Mic?
What was the last news on TV?
What was the last flash of Graflex Camera?
These are some of the questions that Daniel Arsham’s future archeology sculptures make us
ask ourselves. Like looking at our own culture through a million year telescope. In The Dying
Gaul Revisited, Nike meets the Parthenon. Cultural memories refract and reflect with memories
we might be having in the future. All art is time travel communicating with people from the
present but also people who are yet to be born. Daniel Arsham’s work speeds the process up
and gives us the macabre thrill of seeing our culture how others might see it centuries from
now. Of course, Arsham’s sculptures themselves would have to be part of that archeology,
being cast in volcanic glass, hydrostone, steel fragments, rock and crystal but what would the
archeologist of the future make of that? Some strange historicizing cult would be conjectured,
or perhaps a religion that looked to the future. Either way, we won’t be there to find out but
through his work we glimpse, from a safe distance, the ravishes of time which await us all.
And there is nothing more thrilling than dying by proxy and living to tell the tale.
“Steel Bolex Camera”, 2013. Steel fragments, shattered glass, hydrostone. 24 × 21.5 × 5.5 cm / 9 1/2 × 8 1/2 × 2 1/4 inches
t h e m e D i u m o F t h e m e D i u m
s t e v e n m a t i j c i o , 2 0 1 5
Ruins and artifacts are the portrait of a past way of life—enduring as evidence of the way
mankind shapes apparatuses, and the ways they, in turn, shape us. Over the past few years,
Daniel Arsham has turned a variety of modern media devices and cultural objects into
crumbling relics; “preserved,” in his words, “like petrified wood or the figures of Pompeii.”
From phones, cameras, microphones and VHS tapes to film projectors, tires, keyboards and
boomboxes he has produced close to 3,000 calcified effigies of the 20th and 21st centuries from
earthly substances like volcanic ash, obsidian, glacial rock and rose quartz. And while their
introductory presentation in Miami as an archeological dig may seem slightly premature, there
is no question that the physical object has been increasingly cast as abject. It is the anchor, the
baggage, and that which must be surpassed in the name of progress. Cloud-based technologies,
streaming media, virtual identities, e-books, experience economies and the post-nation citizen
collectively advance a dematerialized future where the real grows increasingly ethereal. Facing
this intangible, but rapidly approaching horizon, Arsham’s swelling time capsule takes on the
ostensible guise of resistance: obsessively copying (and recopying) contemporary instruments
with elemental dust to forge a sanctuary of solid ground.
Unlike utilitarian antiquities of the past such as axes or arrowheads, the media devices in
“Remember the Future” seemingly depend on external information to be complete—transmitting
content rather than carrying or constituting it. Moreover, as the pace of development continues
to accelerate and we line up to buy the latest installment of the iPhone or Galaxy, handheld
devices have become glorified placeholders; living briefly as stand-ins within a finite, ignoble
“nowness” that is quickly rendered inferior by the unrelenting next generation, and the next.
Upon this ceaseless march forward Arsham gathers jettisoned casualties of the perpetual
upgrade and congregates an intervention by way of alchemy and archeology. Expounding upon
media guru Marshall McLuhan’s (1911–1980) prophetic maxim that “the medium is the message,”
Arsham alters the medium of the medium to give us pause: replacing the plastic and circuitry
of electronics with the salt of the earth to revalue disposable devices with the weight of History.
By casting various lineages of cameras, microphones, telephones and projectors in/as geological
materials, Arsham slows their evolutionary trek and endows each stage with an otherwise absent
aura of time. By ossifying the pawns that carry obsolescence in their DNA, he gifts these
objects the paradoxical luxury to erode, rather than simply disappear. In this stay of execution,
in an era where we backup ever more data and remember far less, and where the durability of
the digital archive has yet to be fully confirmed, Arsham’s work enshrines these devices in the
“Reach Ruin” exhibition at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, 2012–2013
“Remember the Future” exhibition at The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, 2015
enduring museological language of the artifact. By doing so—turning fossilized versions of
our media dalliances into encyclopedic fetish objects—he enriches the intermediaries as
repositories of History, devotion, entropy, and the lingering fingerprints of us, their authors.
Why do societies around the world go to such ends to preserve and venerate the physical
remnants of those before them? The simple answer is because they are pieces of us, and our
anthropocentric path through time. Arsham’s most recent extension of “Welcome to the Future”
are quite literally pieces of man: marrying the forms of his Pompeii-inspired self-portraits with
the entropic casting process of his media archive. In a now well-known flashpoint of Arsham’s
personal history, we learn that, as a child, he and his family barely survived Hurricane Andrew
as the storm ripped through their Miami home in 1992. Huddled in a closet as walls collapsed,
windows shattered and insulation swirled like mist, he remembers, “The experience was one of
architectural dismemberment—it was quick and violent.” And while Arsham is wary of positioning
this event as the sole foundation of his structure-bending practice, the wreckage he experienced
fundamentally altered the perceived solidity of both the buildings and bodies we live. Decades
later, deep into the evolving legacy of this formative—but now absent—moment, he fashions an
ongoing series of full-body self-portraits out of crushed glass and marble. Seeking to overcome
inherent frailties, fault lines and scars as matter-turned-metaphor, “The glass is really about taking
this broken useless material,” in the words of Arsham, “and reforming it back into something
that has intention and purpose.” His ensuing avatars are more meditative than monumental,
standing ponderous and bewildered as if they had just emerged from hibernation. They have
been made whole and hefty but lack the corresponding footing—searching for orientation as
their plight propels them back to an archetypal quest for the fugitive condition we call reality.
His reconstituted figures are less illusory apparitions than touchstones to a physical existence
that continues to recede as we advance towards a cloud-based future. These figures are one
with shattered glass, geological materials and the aging media objects, not as nostalgic
soothers, but as catalysts for the 21st century mind to travel backwards and forwards at once.
Choosing translation over full-scale transformation, Arsham concludes, “I approach projects
and spaces in a way that I try not to add anything to them, but instead take something we
already know and make it do something that it shouldn’t… Remake or reform it, giving it new
purpose and possibility.” In so doing, he highlights the crucial element of this casting and
collection process—retaining the visual resemblance of our Darwinian consumer landscape
but stripping these objects of their fleeting utility. These devices no longer function as they
were originally intended, but as their societal value erodes their currency is reconstituted as
these aging pariahs are cast—literally and figuratively—as catalysts of the mind. With present
purpose evacuated, these pan-historical relics evoke memories of past uses and projections of
what will take their place in the days ahead. In the process, Arsham thickens the present like
a cloud of humidity—making our clothes sag and breath heavy—as he coalesces the otherwise
intangible passage of time into a new terra, a new geology, to plant our feet. “Fictional Archeology” exhibition at Galerie Perrotin, Hong Kong, 2015
“The Future is Always Now” exhibition at Galerie Perrotin, Paris, 2014
w e l c o m e t o t h e F u t u r e
2015
Volcanic ash, glacial rock dust, obsidian fragments, rose quartz fragments,
steel fragments, pulverized glass, sand, crushed marble, hydrostone
6.7 × 6.7 m
22 × 22 feet
“I wanted to create the sensation of an archeological site in the gallery of Locust Projects in
Miami. To do so I cut a twenty-two foot diameter hole in the floor of the space and filled it with
thousands of cast objects. The materiality of all these works is important to the meaning of
them. I remade these works in geological materials that create a sensation of truth, to create
a sensation that these are not a trompe l’oeil effect. I’m not taking a radio or a camera and
painting it to look old. I’m remaking it in a geological material that conveys time. Volcanic ash,
crystal, obsidian, pyrite, glacial rock dust: all these materials that encapsulate ideas about time.”
a s h 1 6 m m F i l m P r o j e c t o r
2013
Volcanic ash, shattered glass, hydrostone
66 × 78 × 25 cm
26 × 31 × 10 inches
“This is one of the first objects that I cast. I was browsing around eBay and searching for
the iconic film projector, the one from elementary school that we would watch educational
films on. It is made of volcanic ash mixed with a binding element. All of the different works
that I make combine geological materials with an element that allows everything to stick
together and become solid. Volcanic ash to me feels like a material that has been burned and
charred and touched by the earth.”
s e l e n i t e h o l D i n g h a n D s
2015
Selenite, hydrostone
43 × 35.5 × 12.5 cm
17 × 14 × 5 inches
“A lot of my interest in sculpture comes from looking at antiquity and knowing that many of
those sculptures are found in parts. I’m often trying to imagine them as if they have been
found. For me these two hands holding depict an image where you might imagine the rest
of the figures on either side. These two arms break off and these fragments, as a symbol, last
for millennia into the future.”
o b s i D i a n F l a g
2014
Obsidian fragments, ground glass, hydrostone
90 × 148.5 × 9.5 cm
35 1/2 × 58 1/2 × 3 3/4 inches
“I had been doing some tests with casting fabrics and experimenting with sections of American
flags that my friend Chris Stamp had sent me on a whim. We used the flag to test a new casting
technique and material. Of course this object is the most iconic and symbolic of images.
The thing that was so beautiful to me was that the stitching was entirely captured in the
casts. Every stitch in the stars and the folds in the fabric is very apparent in the final work.”
c r y s t a l r o l l e i F l e x c a m e r a
2013
Crystal, shattered glass, hydrostone
15 × 11 × 11 cm
6 × 4 1/4 × 4 1/4 inches
“One of the first things in arts that I studied when I was young was photography. I was 12
or 13 years old and remember seeing the Rolleiflex camera for the first time and looking on
top of it and kind of understanding how those cameras worked. I never actually owned one,
until now. Who knew my first Rolleiflex would be a thousand years old?”
P y r i t e c a t c l o c k
2015
Pyrite, hydrostone
34 × 12 × 8 cm
13 3/8 × 4 23/32 × 3 5/32 inches
“This Felix Clock was one of the most highly produced objects in the world. I remember reading
that in the US, one clock was made every 5 seconds over the last 80 years. I chose this clock
because of its iconic status in that way. I made a lot of clock works and maybe this has to do
with my fascination with the film Back to the Future. There’s an opening scene in that film
where there’s a number of different clocks including the cat clock ticking and they’re all
chiming in at different moments.”
a s h a n D s e l e n i t e
s e a t e D w o m a n
2015
Selenite, volcanic ash, hydrostone
87 × 75 × 87 cm
34 1/4 × 29 1/2 × 34 1/4 inches
“Many of the figurative works recall the ancient ruins of Pompeii. This work in particular
has a very poignant resonance with audiences. Often these works where the body is broken
can be somewhat uncanny and those are the things that I’m trying to draw out from these works.
The first time this work was shown was as part of the scenography for a performance by the
choreographer Jonah Bokaer at the Mona Bismarck Foundation in Paris. The space is a classical
Parisian house with parquet floors and mirrored walls. This contrast between the classical
space and this seemingly archeological figure provided a unique character to the presentation.”
g l a c i a l r o c k , s t e e l
a n D o b s i D i a n h o c k e y m a s k s
2015
Volcanic ash, glacial rock dust, obsidian fragments,
steel fragments, pulverized glass, sand, hydrostone
33 × 18 × 18 cm (x3)
13 × 7 × 7 inches (x3)
“I spent a lot of time looking at the relationship between sports paraphernalia and ancient
gladiator costuming and protection. By shifting the materiality of these contemporary
hockey masks into ancient materials, there’s a collapse of time there that can happen between
the two worlds.”
g l a c i a l r o c k k e y b o a r D
2014
Glacial rock dust, marble, hydrostone
39.5 × 133 × 12.5 cm
15 1/2 × 52 1/4 × 5 inches
“The first keyboard that I cast was a Casio MT-500 keyboard. I was in the studio with
Pharrell Williams talking about instruments that had been very important to him in his
career and then disappeared out of his life. This is the keyboard that was influential to Pharrell
in his early years. The second keyboard that I cast was a Korg keyboard. A few of my musician
friends had indicated to me that this is a perfect representation of the iconic keyboard.”
a s h a n D s t e e l s t a g e
2014
Mixed media
220 × 400 × 300 cm
86 1/2 × 157 1/2 × 118 1/8 inches
“This work expands the scale of the musical works I made. I wanted the piece to be somewhere
between an actual music stage set up and the kind of display you might find in a museum. I loved
the way these dark black ash instruments were silhouetted against the white gallery space.”
g l a c i a l r o c k
h o l l o w g u i t a r
2014
Glacial rock dust, fragments of marble, hydrostone, paint
110 × 40 × 55 cm
43 1/4 × 15 3/4 × 21 3/4 inches
“This is one of the most classic icons of the 20th century. As an object it encapsulates so many
ideas about culture and history. This is the reason I used it.”
P y r i t e c r a c k e D F a c e
2015
Pyrite, hydrostone
35 × 30 × 25 cm
13 3/4 × 11 13/16 × 9 13/16 inches
“Years ago I was visiting the Louvre and saw a Roman sculpture of the head of Marcus Aurelius,
but cracked in half. It was a bronze sculpture made up of two parts of the same face. One
part was collapsed and broken lying on the back of the vitrine and the other protruding out.
In many ways this work is referring to that one. The figurative works which combine geological
materials to me are very much about collapsing the past and the present. They feel at once
ancient and somehow contemporary through their materiality.”
r o s e Q u a r t z r e e l t o r e e l
2014
Rose quartz fragments, marble fragments, hydrostone
55 × 55 × 22 cm
21 3/4 × 21 3/4 × 8 3/4 inches
“In searching on a number of different Tumblr pages from people that are obsessed with
Japanese 1970s reel-to-reels, I settled on this one. These were used to both record music
in a studio as well as to play it back in high fidelity. This kind of antiquated technology
sort of skirts the line of feeling futuristic at the same time.”
P y r i t e a r m s P a n n i n g c o r n e r
2015
Pyrite, glass, obsidian, hydrostone
38 × 56 × 20 cm
15 × 22 × 8 inches
“Tracing the origin of ideas can be complex and often I don’t always know where an idea
originates. This work started with a drawing that I made sometime around 2007 which depicts
an arm reaching through the corner of a building. Like other works in this series, the story of
Pompeii is somewhat reinforced through this combination of figure and architecture for me.”
a s h , g l a c i a l r o c k , o b s i D i a n ,
r o s e Q u a r t z a n D s t e e l
b a s e b a l l P y r a m i D
2014
Volcanic ash, glacial rock dust, obsidian fragments, rose quartz fragments,
steel fragments, pulverized glass, sand, crushed marble, hydrostone
30.5 × 38 × 38 cm
12 × 15 × 15 inches
“Baseball is an American pastime. I played baseball as a child. Often when I’m looking for objects
to cast I’m looking for something that really speaks to a lot of people. These are objects that
many people have personal relationships with and have an iconic nature to them, and this is
one such object. When I was a child, I had a baseball signed by Mickey Mantle that I bought at
a baseball card shop. I loved this ball. It contained so much memory and allure for me. When
I was 18, I tried to sell it and found out it was fake. The feeling of what the ball gave me was
real, even though its authenticity was not.”
c r y s t a l g l o v e
2013
Crystal, shattered glass, hydrostone
27 × 22 × 7 cm
10 3/4 × 8 1/2 × 2 5/8 inches
“This is one of the first objects that I cast which is soft. Much like the other works which are
casts of clothing, this piece implies a figure or a hand and I’ve cast it in pulverized crystal.
The texture of the leather rendered in crystal was so beautiful to me. It led to other works cast
from soft materials.”
s t e e l P i l l m i c r o P h o n e
2014
Steel fragments, volcanic glass, hydrostone
39 × 15 × 15 cm
15 1/4 × 6 × 6 inches
“The pill microphone was another shape that I loved as classic icons, things that we’ve seen
forever. These are the kinds of things that I’m looking for when I search for objects to cast.
The perforations on the surface of the mic created such a nuanced surface.”
a s h , s t e e l , o b s i D i a n ,
g l a c i a l r o c k
a n D r o s e Q u a r t z
j e t F i g h t e r h e l m e t s
2015
Volcanic ash, glacial rock dust, obsidian fragments, rose quartz fragments,
steel fragments, pulverized glass, sand, crushed marble, hydrostone
30 × 30 × 25 cm (x5)
12 × 12 × 10 inches (x5)
“The idea of seriality in many of these works is something that I like to play with. You’ll see five
of the same object in different materials and having a different erosion in each one. When we
find objects from the past, they are often things that are made in multiples, such as a pot or
vase. There are always subtle differences between them similar to the differences that I’m
creating artificially in these works. I spend a lot of time walking through museums not really
looking at anything in particular, just floating around. Throughout History there seem to be
three common themes celebrated in art: love, religion and war. I’m tapping into these themes.”
a s h , s t e e l , o b s i D i a n a n D
g l a c i a l r o c k t u r n t a b l e s
2014
Volcanic ash, glacial rock dust, obsidian fragments, steel fragments,
pulverized glass, crushed marble, hydrostone
38 × 43 × 12 cm (x4)
15 × 17 × 5 inches (x4)
“The Technics 1200 turntable was one of the most iconic objects to me growing up. Just looking
at the object evokes an emotional response.”
a s h a n D s e l e n i t e
b a s k e t b a l l j e r s e y
2015
Volcanic ash, selenite, hydrostone
79 × 51 × 33 cm
31 × 20 × 13 inches
“There is something so specific to me about basketball in the 1990s. This was the era of the
giants like Jordan and Ewing. Those players were like gladiators to me. This jersey looks almost
like a piece of body armor.”
s t e e l a r m w i t h b a s k e t b a l l
2015
Steel, ground obsidian, hydrostone
79 × 26 × 30 cm
31 3/32 × 10 1/4 × 11 13/16 inches
“As I started to make these arms reaching through architecture, I noticed that there was nothing
in them that tied them to the present. When we see a cast radio, a telephone or even one of the
figures that is wearing sneakers, we can identify the period. I made a few works in which
the arms were holding contemporary objects. In this case the object was a basketball which
links the work if not to this specific moment in time, then at least to the general present.”
r o s e Q u a r t z P o l a r o i D
2013
Rose quartz fragments, hydrostone, sand
15.5 × 13.5 × 15.5 cm
6 × 5 1/8 × 6 inches
“When I went to search for this sculpture, I was really looking for a very specific Polaroid
camera. I know there’s probably twenty or thirty different models and I looked at all of them.
This model jumped out to me as the camera I remember from 1985 while on vacation with my
family. Imagine some frozen memories contained in the photos still inside this crystal camera.”
r o s e Q u a r t z j a c k e t
2015
Rose quartz fragments, marble fragments, hydrostone
73.5 × 71 × 30.5 cm
29 × 38 × 12 inches
“I wanted to create a work in which the figure was removed from the clothing. This jacket
appears as if there is a human figure giving it shape, but the figure has been removed. This
work refers to an earlier series I’ve created which plays with architecture, and ghostly figures
interacting with it. This work is one of the most complex pieces that I have ever constructed
in the mold making process.”
a s h , g l a c i a l r o c k ,
o b s i D i a n , r o s e Q u a r t z
a n D s t e e l b a s k e t b a l l s
2014
Volcanic ash, glacial rock dust, obsidian fragments, rose quartz fragments,
steel fragments, pulverized glass, sand, crushed marble, hydrostone
109 × 125 × 25 cm
43 × 49 × 10 inches
“The basketballs are something that people recognize in terms of culture and even know what
the texture feels like. The basketball rack conveys how these objects are impossible to cast
identical twice. Looking back at objects from antiquity in a museum or archeological site
you might find fifteen different pots that are all the same size but they’re broken in different
ways and there may even be variations in the making of them. This is a contemporary version
of that presence of repetition.”
a s h a n D c r y s t a l P a y P h o n e s
2013
Volcanic ash, crystal, shattered glass, hydrostone
61 × 69 × 18 cm
24 × 27 × 7 inches
“You can still see payphones on the corners of many major cities around the world. They’re
kind of like these contemporary relics already. For this work, I chose a classic payphone that
has been on the streets in New York City since the 1980s.”
t h e D y i n g g a u l r e v i s i t e D
2015
Selenite, hydrostone
90 × 170 × 80 cm
5 7/16 × 66 15/16 × 31 1/2 inches
“This was the first figure that I made using the technique of the eroded objects. I replicated
the position of a very famous ancient Roman work called The Dying Gaul. Often when we
find figures in the museum, whether they be marble or other materials, the curators have
repositioned them back together and have filled in areas that were missing with new marble
so the sculptures feel complete. Accompanying the work, there is often a diagram depicting the
areas which they found and the areas which have been recreated. I always loved the diagrams
showing the original. My version of The Dying Gaul is an imaginary scenario of a figure which
was broken and the pieces were never completed by a conservator.”
c r y s t a l l o c k s
2013
Crystal, shattered glass, hydrostone
13 × 32 × 28 cm
5 1/8 × 12 1/2 × 11 inches
“I was in Paris a number of years ago and spent the day taking photos at the famous Pont des Arts
where couples hang locks on the rails of the bridge and throw the key into the Seine. This is an
object where the thing itself has less meaning than the act of placing it there. It struck me as an
object that could contain all of this emotion and context within it. For this reason, this is a very
powerful object. It’s strange now to see that the French have decided to remove all of the locks
from the bridges because of the weight. It’s a funny metaphor that because of the weight of all
of these people’s desire and commitment they were afraid the bridge was going to collapse.”
s e l e n i t e t o y P h o n e
2015
Selenite, volcanic ash, hydrostone
43 × 24 × 24 cm
16 15/16 × 9 7/16 × 9 7/16 inches
“I went to Disney World for the first time in 1984. One of the first memories I have is of this phone
they had at the hotel there.”
r o s e Q u a r t z w a l k m a n
2013
Rose quartz fragments, hydrostone, sand
16.5 × 18 × 7.5 cm
6 1/2 × 7 1/8 × 3 inches
“This is the original portable music device that encapsulates the idea of the future to me.
It was such a prolific object when it was released. It has a very specific tie to a moment in time.”
h o l l o w b o x e r
2015
Volcanic ash, selenite, hydrostone
124.5 × 99.1 × 30.5 cm
49 × 39 × 12 inches
“In my experiments with casting fabric, I noticed that I could create the illusion of form without
having anything behind to support it. This work implies that there is a boxing figure present
but does so only through the clothing the boxer wears.”
r o s e Q u a r t z e r o D e D v h s
2014
Rose quartz fragments, hydrostone, sand
10.5 x 18.5 x 2.5 cm
4 1/8 x 7 1/4 x 1 inches
“This VHS tape contained so many images, so many memories, so many stories. When I was
a child and I stayed home sick from school, I watched Star Wars on a VHS tape that had been
recorded off the television, complete with commercial breaks and all.”
s t e e l g r a F l e x c a m e r a
2013
Steel fragments, shattered glass, hydrostone
40.5 × 30.5 × 28 cm
16 × 12 × 11 inches
“The 1930s and 1940s was the classic era of the beat photography reporter and photographers.
People like Weegee were on the street everyday capturing gruesome murders and used this
Graflex camera. I am very fond of this era of photography.”
a s h , s t e e l , o b s i D i a n , g l a c i a l r o c k a n D
r o s e Q u a r t z l a P t o P s
2013
Volcanic ash, glacial rock dust, obsidian fragments, rose quartz fragments,
steel fragments, pulverized glass, sand, crushed marble, hydrostone
24 × 28 × 33 cm
9.5 × 11 × 13 inches
“These laptops changed the world. Now, they are relics of History. What is next?
All of my fictional archeological works explore this idea.”
a s h a n D s e l e n i t e
s t a n D i n g w o m a n
2015
Selenite, volcanic ash, hydrostone
173 × 66 × 50 cm
68 1/8 × 25 31/32 × 19 11/16 inches
“I wanted to create a tension of weight with this work. You have the feeling that the figure
should not be standing up, that it should collapse. At the same time, it relates to some of the
classical sculptures I have long been fascinated with in museums.”
P y r i t e c o l u m n o F F o o t b a l l s
2015
Pyrite, ground black glass, hydrostone
284.5 × 16.5 × 16.5 cm
112 × 6 1/2 × 6 1/2 inches
“Brancusi has always been a big inspiration to me. Since the first time I visited Paris as
a teenager, I remember going to the recreated studio of Brancusi. I always thought that
the way he put forms together was elegant, smart, and completely economic. There wasn’t
anything that was outside of necessity. I like to play with those ideas in my own work in
terms of display. I thought these footballs through their shape could be arranged almost like
Brancusi’s Endless Column.”
r o s e Q u a r t z F o o t b a l l h e l m e t
2015
Rose quartz, marble dust, hydrostone
29.2 × 25.4 × 33 cm
11 1/2 × 10 × 13 inches
“I had one of these football helmets lying around the studio for a couple years and recently
had spent a lot of time in the Hellenic wing at The Met. By comparing these ancient masks
of protection with contemporary helmets with a similar purpose, I’m trying to create a
relationship through time. The similarities may make the viewers feel like they are being
brought forward in time.”
P y r i t e F o o t b a l l j e r s e y
2015
Pyrite, ground black glass, hydrostone
104.1 × 86.4 × 8.9 cm
41 × 34 × 3 1/2 inches
“I grew up in Miami. Dan Marino was my hero. This is his jersey cast in pyrite crystal and
obsidian. One major difference between this work and many of the others is that the fabric
is not draped on a figure form. It looks tossed on the floor, almost as if Dan did so at the end
of a game and then time altered it.”
a s h a n D s e l e n i t e t e l e v i s i o n
2015
Selenite, volcanic ash, hydrostone
25 × 35 × 25 cm
9 3/4 × 13 3/4 × 9 3/4 inches
“This television is like the black and white television I had when I was a kid. It was my
television. I remember Ronald Reagan giving a speech during dinner time and my father
complaining to this miniature Reagan in black and white. This TV, the size of it, the kind
of lack of technology in it, is key.”
r o s e Q u a r t z t a b l e P h o n e
2013
Rose quartz fragments, hydrostone, sand
12.5 × 12.5 × 21.5 cm
5 × 5 × 8 1/2 inches
“This was the classic telephone. It’s an object so recognizable it is like the symbol of a phone,
like the emoji telephone. As with everything else in this series, I’m looking for icons. Things
that people already know that I can then play with and manipulate.”
s t e e l b r o k e n F i g u r e
2015
Steel fragments, volcanic glass, hydrostone
172 × 57 × 33 cm
67 3/4 × 22 1/2 × 13 inches
“This is a work inspired by a piece I had seen at the Louvre a number of years ago, which
was a broken marble statue. I think it was an equestrian statue of Nero. The only thing you
could see left of the statue is the face and one of the arms. It’s positioned in a way that your
eye can reform the remainder of the image. This work was interesting to me because in my
studies of archeology, I’m often fascinated by how things are pieced together, how an image
of an old artifact can be composed from multiple fragments. This work that I made replicates
that idea, projecting it into the future.”
g l a c i a l r o c k t i r e
2014
Glacial rock dust, marble dust, hydrostone
75 × 75 × 25 cm
29 1/2 × 29 1/2 × 9 3/4 inches
“Sometime around 2007, I was introduced to Robert Rauschenberg. During a visit to his studio,
I remember seeing a glass tire that he had there. That image has stayed with me, I always
wanted to make a work using a tire. I found my own Goodyear tire. His was cast in glass,
this one was cast in glacial rock.”
m o t o c r o s s h e l m e t s
2015
Volcanic ash, glacial rock dust, obsidian fragments, rose quartz fragments,
steel fragments, pulverized glass, sand, crushed marble, hydrostone
30 × 25 × 30 cm (x5)
12 × 10 × 12 inches (x5)
“I made five of these helmets in all of the different geological materials. There was something
ancient feeling about the shape of these objects. They remind me of Roman gladiator helmets
or armor that I have seen in museums. When the style of a modern object, such as this,
references an ancient one and is presented in a geological material, it confuses time.”
a s h m o v i e c a m e r a
2013
Volcanic ash, shattered glass, hydrostone
48 × 79 × 25.5 cm
19 × 31 1/8 × 10 1/32 inches
“I was interested in creating a work that solidified the idea of a frozen moment. The movie
camera is active and is the opposite of the film projector, in that it captures frozen moments in
time. This is a 35 mm Mitchell movie camera. I selected this particular camera and made sure
it was a camera that was nonfunctioning so I wouldn’t take one out of the world.”
o b s i D i a n , s t e e l a n D a s h r a D i o s
2014
Volcanic ash, volcanic glass, ground glass, obsidian fragments, steel fragments, hydrostone
132 × 52 × 14 cm
52 × 20 1/2 × 5 1/2 inches
“You could write books about this single object and what it meant to people worldwide during
the 1980s and 1990s. The portability of bringing a musical environment anywhere was a cultural
phenomenon during these years. When I cast the radios, I wanted to focus on the idea of
seriality. I was thinking about Donald Judd’s work. There is an idea of repetition, yet each is
slightly different, making it impossible to cast the objects in the same way twice. The type of
erosions and the way these erosions form is something that I can’t quite control. It’s a random
aspect that happens within the actual mold.”
s e l e n i t e h a n D s i n P r a y e r
2015
Selenite, pulverized marble, hydrostone
38 × 40.5 × 30.5 cm
15 × 16 × 12 inches
“The position of these hands can mean many different things across the world. I’ve often
shown works that have some relationship with religion, and when they’re shown in different
places in Europe, North America and Asia, the interpretation can be different. I like that the
meaning can be interpreted by the viewer based on their culture.”
r e m e m b e r t h e F u t u r e
2015
Volcanic ash, glacial rock dust, obsidian fragments, rose quartz fragments,
steel fragments, pulverized glass, sand, crushed marble, hydrostone
274 × 457 × 457 cm
108 × 180 × 180 inches
“This piece developed out of a problem. The problem was that I wanted to recreate the massive
excavation that I had done in Miami at Locust Projects. At the CAC in Cincinnati, a Zaha Hadid
designed building, excavating the floors of the museum was not possible. Instead of cutting
a hole in the ground, I created a massive pile of the thousands of objects that were previously
shown in the floor excavation piece. Although the excavation site gave an idea of something
being uncovered, this arrangement had the opposite effect. It appeared as I thought the
objects had been disregarded as if they were the waste products of our current lives. For me,
looking at archeology, there are often things that past cultures have thrown away, and I thought
that was a curious and poignant connection to make between the past and the present.”
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Fictional Archeology
© Galerie Perrotin, 2015
© Éditions Dilecta, 2015
All art copyright © Daniel Arsham
Conception and Production
Raphaël Gatel, Clémentine Dupont
Graphic Design
Antoine Pépin
Photography
Claire Dorn, Guillaume Ziccarelli, Carlos Avendaño,
Zach Balber with Ginger Photography Inc.,
Tony Walsh, Joyce Yung
Texts
Steven Matijcio, Marc Quinn
and Daniel Arsham
The artist would like to thank the gallery and his studio team
Emmanuel Perrotin, Peggy Leboeuf,
Alison Wander, Daniel Bamba, Raphaël Gatel,
Stéphanie Arsham, Nathan Abbe,
Camilo Cadena, Cesar Castro, Meghan Clohessy,
Shan Liu, Greta Llanes, Matthew Mondini,
Jade Sabatino
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced
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Printed by Manufacture d’Histoires Deux-Ponts,
Grenoble, November 2015.
Dépôt légal novembre 2015
ISBN 979-10-90490-96-3