HOW Art Museum announces the first solo exhibition in China by the renowned American artist Daniel Arsham will be on view from June 29th, 2019 in Shanghai.

New York based artist Daniel Arsham’s aesthetic 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.

The exhibition Perpetual Present was specifically conceived for the space of HOW Art Museum Shanghai, presenting the most recent and representative works of Daniel Arsham. The artist will continue his exploration on the relationship of architecture and body; seeking to discuss the nonlinearity of time and history by blurring the boundaries between present and future, reality and fiction, inviting the viewers to permeate the state of the never-changing present embodied by the transformation of ideas and forms.

About the artist

Raised in Miami, Daniel Arsham attended the Cooper Union in New York City where he received the Gelman Trust Fellowship Award in 2003. Structural experiment, historical inquiry, and satirical with all combine in Arsham’s ongoing interrogation of the real and the imagined. His interest in collaboration began early. In 2004 legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham asked Arsham to create the stage design for his work eyeSpace. Despite never being trained in stage design he has continued his practice, collaborating with Robert Wilson, as well as a sustained collaboration with Jonah Bokaer. To further expand the possibilities of spatial manipulation and collaboration, Arsham founded Snarkitecture in 2007 with partner Alex Mustonen to serve new and imaginative purposes. Arsham’s most recent collaboration with world renowned musician and producer Pharrell Williams involved the recreation in Volcanic Ash of Pharrell’s first keyboard.

Arsham’s work has been shown at PS1 in New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, The Athens Bienniale in Athens, Greece, The New Museum in New York, Mills College Art Museum in Oakland, California and Carréd’Art de Nîmes, France among others. A first monograph of Arsham’s work was published by the French Centre National des arts plastiques and a second one was published by Galerie Perrotin in 2012.

About the exhibition

Dates: Jun 29, 2019 - Oct 24, 2019

Venue: HOW Art Museum

Courtesy of the artist and HOW Art Museum, for further information please visit www.howartmuseum.org.