Daniel Arsham’s solo exhibition Wherever You Go, There You Are—his first major US museum show—explores the artist’s concept of fictional archaeology. Arsham (b. 1980, Cleveland, OH) works across sculpture, architecture, drawing, and photography to investigate ideas of history, symbology, and the material nature of time.
Traditionally, archaeology has been employed as a methodology to sort through and process the past, but Arsham’s multilayered practice asks the question: What if we could dig through the future? Interested in the notion of time travel, the artist creates works that operate as future relics of the present—eroded casts of everyday objects and human figures built from geological materials like sand, pyrite, and volcanic ash. A camera, telephone, and hourglass, all conductors of information, merge with a replica of the 1981 DeLorean built by “Doc” Emmett Brown in the classic 1980s film Back to the Future to operate as remnants of the present seen through the eyes of future researchers. Together, the constellation of works in Wherever You Go, There You Are tells the stories of our time, reminding us of the innate ways we create, craft, and build objects to assert who we are as human beings.
Daniel Arsham: Wherever You Go, There You Are is organized by Heidi Zuckerman, CEO and Director, Orange County Museum of Art
ABOUT DANIEL ARSHAM
Daniel Arsham’s practice exists at the intersection of art, architecture and performance. Through his work, Arsham poetically combines the past, present, and future, skirting the line between romanticism and pop art—while experimenting with the timelessness of certain symbols and cultural icons.
Arsham was born in 1980 in Cleveland, Ohio. Raised in Miami, Arsham attended The Cooper Union where he received the Gelman Trust Fellowship Award in 2003. Upon graduation, Arsham toured worldwide with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as the company’s stage designer for over four years—an experience that informed his ongoing synergistic practice. In 2007, he founded the pioneering architecture firm Snarkitecture with partner Alex Mustonen. Collaboration continues to be a key cornerstone of his practice—realizing high-profile projects with music producer Pharrell Williams and designer Hedi Slimane, as well as Dior, Porsche, and Rimowa.
Objects for Living (2019), Arsham’s first collaboration with the gallery, was inspired by Arsham’s recent renovation of his own Long Island home built in 1971 by the noted modernist architect Norman Jaffe. This body of work not only continued lines of investigation that he has pursued throughout his career, but also represented a significant departure for Arsham and heralds the development of new vocabularies of form.
Arsham has participated in numerous major international exhibitions, including at the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, OH; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; the HOW Art Museum, Shanghai, and the Moco Museum, Amsterdam. His works are included in the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL, and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN. He lives and works in New York, NY.
