Looking Back at Daniel Arsham: Welcome to the Future 2014
Back in 2014, Daniel Arsham presented Welcome to the Future, a major, site-specific installation at Locust Projects. While it was the first time Arsham exhibited with Locust Projects, it was not his first time making art happen here, since Locust Projects space in the Miami Design District occupies the space where the former Placemaker —an artist-run space co-founded by Arsham —used to be.
In the past six years, Arsham’s career has continued to grow and impress in every way possible, as he continues his experimental sculptural and architectural works, which warp or destabilize recognizable structures and forms with playfulness and wit.
“…this space that we’re in here now was my space 10 years ago, so it’s interesting to kind of come back here and literally dig up the past. Locust for me has always been the space that’s been about making things that couldn’t happen otherwise in a gallery or museum context.” — Daniel Arsham, 2014
Above: Clip from video filmed at Locust Projects in 2014 for Miami Design District by A Common Machine Production, WATCH FULL VIDEO here.
For the installation, Arsham transformed the gallery into an excavation site, digging trench in the gallery’s floor that held thousands of calcified artifacts—a muted cacophony of 20th century media devices. Mounds of boom boxes, electric guitars, SLR cameras, Blackberries, game controllers, VHS tapes, Walkmans, film projectors, and portable televisions, rendered in crystal, volcanic ash, and other minerals filled the pit, collapsing linear narratives of past, present, and future.
“This is not the first time Locust Projects let an exhibitor cut through the concrete floor of its exhibition site — Los Angeles artist Ruben Ochoa pioneered that practice in 2011 — but it certainly is the most ambitious.” — Siobhan Morrissey, Miami Herald, November 11, 2014.
The trench presented the recent past as archeology, a world of technological objects whose obsolescence was built into their design, preserved like petrified wood or the figures of Pompeii. Arsham presented these devices as a mass below our feet, in a grand gesture that rewrites narratives of production, history, and discovery.
Welcome to the Future was made possible with major support from: John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Espirito Santo Bank, Galerie Perrotin New York.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Daniel Arsham’s uchronic aesthetics 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. They are eroded casts of modern artifacts and contemporary human figures, which he expertly makes out of some geological material such as sand, selenite or volcanic ash for them to appear as if they had just been unearthed after being buried for ages. 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, Daniel Arsham also experiments with the timelessness of certain symbols and gestures across cultures. See full CV and more works at Gallery Perrotin New York.
LEARN MORE…
LISTEN: In this Business of HYPE podcast— hosted by jeffstaple —Daniel Arsham discusses his career trajectory and why it’s important to make art for everyone.
WATCH: How Daniel Arsham's Experimental Art Attracted Collabs With Pharrell and Adidas
Locust Projects 2014-2015 exhibitions and programming are made possible with the support from: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Cowles Charitable Trust; The State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; Foundation for Contemporary Arts; Funding Arts Network; Galt & Skye Mikesell; John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; The National Endowment for the Arts Art Works Grant.