Daniel Arsham: Perpetual Present

HOW Art Museum (Shanghai) is very pleased to present the first solo exhibition in China by the renowned American artist Daniel Arsham. Perpetual Present will be on view from June 29 to October 24, 2019.

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, and inviting the viewers to permeate the state of the never-changing present, embodied by the transformation of ideas and forms.

In the exhibition, artist Daniel Arsham creates an archaeological site from the future. Phones, radios, guitars, jackets, basketballs… These familiar objects are set in a strange form and placed in huge potholes, as if they have been buried underground for millennia, only having been recently unearthed to see the light of day. All of this leaves the viewer at a strange temporal node, when and where are we?

The title of the exhibition points directly to “time.” The incomplete objects of contemporary life which frequently reoccur throughout the exhibition reiterates the reflection of the artist in the form of the following proposition: from Heidegger’s “Dasein” to the entropic time of the Anthropocene, to the time when accelerationism proceeds at great speed: when it passes us, everything is destroyed by this accelerated force. In contrast to the instantaneous force of destruction brought about through this accelerated time, the damaged items created by Arsham present a slow erosiveness that is gradually formed through time due to their innate materiality: the convergence of the biological, geological and historical time brought about invasion and reproduction.

However, Arsham’s work is not presented in an obscure or unintelligible way, contrarily, the artist tries to use objects and even cartoon characters that people are familiar with in order to discuss the relationship between time and materiality, destruction and creation, digital and medium, architecture and human body. There relationships are presented in an approachable manner, and through the intervention of performance and participatory elements, the audience can participate in the topics that the exhibition hopes to discuss.

The exhibition has received support from Daniel Arsham Studio and Perrotin.

 

About HOW Art Museum 
HOW Art Museum was founded by the Chinese collector Mr. Zheng Hao, and Mr. Yun Cheagab has served as director since 2012. It consists of two museums, HOW Art Museum (Shanghai) and HOW Art Museum (Wenzhou). The latter opened in 2013, and has held nearly 20 contemporary art exhibitions.

HOW Art Museum (Shanghai), located in Pudong New District, opened to the public in September 2017. It pioneers to create a new model of operating a “Night Art Museum” for the convenience of the public, opening from 1 to 10pm regularly, and 10am to 10pm on the weekends and holidays. Meanwhile, HOW Art Museum also carries out international exchange programs such as HOW International Curatorial Residency Program and HOW International Artist Residency Program, so as to establish a brand-new art complex and cultural landmark in Shanghai.