Daniel Arsham

Daniel Arsham born 1980 in Cleveland, Ohio is an American artist. He lives and works in New York City. Arsham’s multidisciplinary art combines art, architecture and performance. Raised in Miami, Florida, Arsham attended the Cooper Union in New York City where he received the Gelman Trust Fellowship Award in 2003. Soon thereafter he was invited to create stage design and tour with choreographer Merce Cunningham’s Dance Company leading to ongoing stage design practice and a sustained collaboration with choreographer and former Cunningham dancer, Jonah Boaker. Arsham founded Snarkitecture with partner Alex Mustonen in 2007. The architecture collaboration has included work with fashion brands, interior and architectural design, and a complete line of functional design objects. In 2014 Arsham’s, Films of the Future was born. This production company synthesizes all of Arsham’s creative output over the last decade and creates a visual setting in which his otherworldly and futuristic artwork might exist. 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, Cincinnati CAC, SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah GA, California and Carré d’Art de Nîmes, France among others.

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His latest series, Future Relic is two years in the making and consists of nine short films that depict a future civilization before and after Earth undergoes major ecological changes. The series also includes sculptures of petrified twentieth-century media artifacts constructed to look like artifacts decaying from obsolescence. In 2017, he was named to HypeBeast’s HB100 list for their top 100 influencers in the industry.
Merce Cunningham In 2006, modern dance choreographer Merce Cunningham asked Arsham to design the set, lighting and costumes for his piece, “eyeSpace.” The performance premiered in 2007 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Miami. Arsham, the youngest artist invited to work with the

company was also the last artist to collaborate with Cunningham before the choreographer’s death in 2009. The two worked on a series of performances as part of the Festival National de Danse de Val-de-Marne. For these performances, Cunningham asked Arsham to recreate the in situ style of set design originally explored by Merce and Robert Rauschenberg.
Hedi Slimane In 2005, Arsham was commissioned by fashion designer Hedi Slimane to design the fitting rooms for Dior Homme’s Los Angeles shop. Slimane’s only limitations were that the rooms have “a hook, a seat and a mirror.” Arsham’s design incorporates his signature plaster erosions: the white fitting room walls seem to melt onto the bench, the mirror appears to have been excavated from the wall

Jonah Bokaer
In 2007, Jonah Bokaer performed choreography inspired by Arsham’s work at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris. Bokaer, previously a dancer for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, is a media-artist and choreographer. Bokaer and Arsham collaborated on “REPLICA,” a piece that incorporates built space, objects, and lighting in an exploration of memory loss, pattern recognition, and perceptual faculties. The performance had its world premier at IVAM in Valencia, Spain as part of Robert Wilson (director) exhibition “Frontiers.” “REPLICA” toured and performed at The New Museum in New York City and Harman Center for the Arts in Washington, DC. Their new collaboration “Why Patterns” combines Arsham’s architectural practice Snarkitecture with his performance work with Bokaer. “Why Patterns” had its world premier at Rotterdamse Schouwburg in Rotterdam, Netherlands in February 2010. The dance’s U.S. premiere took place at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts in August 2011.