Daniel Arsham

Daniel Arsham is an American artist whose work brings contemporary objects into contact with imagined histories. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1980 and raised in Miami, he lives and works in New York. His practice moves between sculpture, painting, drawing, architecture, performance and design. Familiar objects often become strangely displaced in time: recognizable enough to summon a memory, but altered enough to suggest that someone in a distant future has just uncovered them. Daniel Arsham artist and works page Daniel Arsham Wherever You Go There You Are

Arsham studied at The Cooper Union, receiving the Gelman Trust Fellowship Award in 2003. His early architectural interventions made walls, stairs and ordinary interiors behave unexpectedly, using apparent erosion, concealed figures and shifting surfaces to unsettle assumptions about solid structures. Stage design expanded that interest into spaces occupied by performers. His collaborators have included Merce Cunningham and Jonah Bokaer. In 2007, he and Alex Mustonen founded Snarkitecture, extending his work with space into a collaborative design practice. Daniel Arsham official biography

A recurring thread in his work is fictional archaeology. Rather than reconstructing a lost civilization, Arsham imagines the archaeological remains of the world around him. Cameras, telephones, sporting equipment and human figures acquire broken surfaces or crystalline growths. Materials including sand, pyrite and volcanic ash give these sculptures a geological character. At the Orange County Museum of Art in 2023, a DeLorean associated with Back to the Future joined these everyday objects, making time travel both a recognizable cultural reference and a way of looking at the present. Daniel Arsham Wherever You Go There You Are

Installation and performance give this idea a scale beyond a single collectible object. For Hourglass at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art in 2017, Arsham developed three connected environments: a blue Japanese garden, an amethyst-colored cavern of sports equipment, and large hourglasses containing crystals and sculptural casts. Performers periodically changed elements of the installation. These works invite viewers to experience time through movement, accumulation and concealment, rather than treating erosion only as a finish applied to an object. Daniel Arsham Hourglass

Classical sculpture provides another recurring vocabulary. Perrotin’s 2023 retrospective presentation, 20 Years / 20 Ans, traced Arsham’s use of historic statuary molds to his 2019 access at the Réunion des Musées Nationaux Grand Palais. Later variations added veils or combined materials such as wood, bronze and polished stainless steel. The same presentation foregrounded his return to painting and his drawings on hotel stationery. Those sketches preserve a more intimate, portable strand of a practice often encountered through monumental installations. Daniel Arsham 20 Ans

Landscape changes the encounter again. Relics in the Landscape at Yorkshire Sculpture Park placed eroded bronze figures and cultural symbols in an established garden, including Unearthed Bronze Eroded Melpomene and Bronze Eroded Bunny. The park connected Arsham’s interest in destruction and regeneration to his childhood experience of Hurricane Andrew. His collaborations also carry the work into functional objects: Objects for Living began with furniture inspired by his Long Island home, while his 930A project transformed a 1986 Porsche 911 Turbo into a drivable artwork. Daniel Arsham Relics in the Landscape press page Daniel Arsham artist and works page Daniel Arsham immortalises his life story in a 911 Turbo

For collectors, the recurring visual language should not obscure substantial differences between objects. A unique graphite drawing, an editioned furniture design and a poster reproducing a sculpture belong to different kinds of production. Perrotin identifies The Belleview Biltmore: Study for Veiled Classical Bust as a unique graphite-on-paper work, while its standard Amalgamized Bust of Veiled Woman poster is an open-edition offset print. Friedman Benda lists Lattice Chair (2022) in an edition of eight and Gazoo Table Lamp (2021) in an edition of 250. Compare the specific medium, dimensions, edition statement, signature, publisher and condition for each work; a familiar subject or matching title does not establish equivalence. Books, collaborative products and sculptural editions offer additional ways into the practice, with their own production histories and collecting considerations. The Belleview Biltmore Study for Veiled Classical Bust Amalgamized Bust of Veiled Woman 2023 Standard Daniel Arsham artist and works page Daniel Arsham 20 Ans

Editions and release history

Explore the linked edition records for individual materials, production quantities and sale channels. This catalogue is a growing selection, not a complete inventory of Arsham’s work.

Official artist website · Arsham Editions · Perrotin