Daniel Arsham’s “Wherever You Go, There You Are” exhibition at the Orange County Museum of Art is on display until June 4th.
Daniel Arsham: The Multidisciplinary Artist
Active since the early 2000s and currently displayed at OCMA, Daniel Arsham is a Cleveland-born contemporary artist known for his multidisciplinary approach to art, which often includes themes of time and decay. His current exhibition at OCMA “Wherever You Go, There You Are” provides insightful exploration of history, architecture and the passage of time.
In 2004, the art world recognized Daniel Arsham for his collaboration with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as a scenic artist and stage designer. This collaboration allowed Arshman to explore his interest in the intersection of art, architecture, and performance, thus helping him establish himself as a multidisciplinary artist, and gain recognition in the art world.
Exploring Time and Decay through Art
Today, Arsham still follows his multidisciplinary approach to art, often using everyday objects in unexpected ways to create a sense of otherworldly beauty and chaos. His work incorporates themes of time, memory, and transformation, as well as elements of erosion and geological processes.
One of his signature techniques is to create sculptures that appear to be in a state of decay. The materials he uses include volcanic ash, shattered glass, and crystals. This combination of materials creates the illusion of fragility, deterioration, and crystallization in time.
Daniel Arsham’s “Wherever You Go, There You Are” display at OCMA plays with time by recasting objects from the present or recent past into a state of decay and erosion, as if discovered by future archaeologists. Life-size and concrete, Arsham’s eroded figures evoke connections across history, asking us to consider how information is transmitted and received, and how we decide what is made permanent or temporary.
Arsham’s “Wherever You Go, There You Are” Collection
His exhibition at OCMA includes “Eroded Delorean,” “Falling Clock,” “Blue Cacite Eroded Venus of Arles,” and other intriguing eroded casts of everyday objects, human figures and paintings.
The entire collection elicits a unique sense of temporality and fragility. It reminds the viewer just how quickly time flies and forces us to look far into the future, when things we now consider innovative and modern slowly deteriorate and erode. From an archeologist’s perspective, the exhibition evokes mystery and wonder, and presents a question of “How did this happen?”
Find more information here: Daniel Arsham’s OCMA exhibition
