Perrotin Dubai is to present a debut solo exhibition What Remains by American artist Daniel Arsham. Opening October 30, 2025 and on view through January 10, 2026, this exhibition marks the first solo show since the opening of the Perrotin Dubai gallery. What Remains features several new series from Arsham's extensive practice, including sculpture, painting and drawing, and a new sound installation, focusing on themes of cultural memory, and the passage of time.
Arsham will transform the gallery into a sonic installation with his latest sculptural series of copper wrapped bonsai tree sculptures. Doubling as functional stereo speakers, these works will play ambient music throughout the exhibition. This new series pays homage to Japanese Zen Buddhist culture and Arsham’s past presentations of sand zen gardens, which he has exhibited around the world at the Lotte Museum, South Korea and the Musée Guimet, France, among others.
Arsham also unveils a new suite of works relating to his recent Labyrinth series. Composed in cast sand, Arsham’s Stairs in a Labyrinth draws influence from artists like M.C. Escher and Renee Magritte’s maze-like works to create a sculptural double portrait. From head-on the work appears as a portrait bust of a sitter, transforming in the profile view into a maze of architectural levels and stairwells.
Alongside the sculpture, Arsham presents a still-life painting of another labyrinth bust and a selection of charcoal predatory drawings. In this series, Arsham beckons viewers to navigate intricate compositions, suggesting an interplay of layers and pathways reminiscent of archeological sites where the past reveals itself in unexpected ways.
Alongside these new series, Arsham expands his decades-long project of “Fictional Archaeology,” where the artist examines objects from the twentieth century that are containers for collective cultural memory. Cast in his signature materials of geologic crystals and pigmented hydrostone, patinated bronze, and fiberglass, Arsham presents objects like a Rolling Stone magazine eroded with pink quartz crystals, a NY Yankees hat that appears to be emerging out of the architecture of the wall, and a bronze scaled replica of a 1985 DMC Delorean car - immortalized in the film Back to the Future.
Daniel Arsham has spent over twenty years cultivating an artistic universe that challenges conventional perceptions of time and reality. His works often evoke a sense of nostalgia and imaginative exploration, encouraging viewers to reflect on our collective history and the artifacts that shape our cultural identity. Arsham is pleased to bring these works to Dubai for his first solo show in the UAE.
Born in 1980 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Lives and works in New York, USA
New York based artist Daniel Arsham’s work explores the fields of fine art, architecture, performance, design and film. Raised in Miami, Arsham attended the Cooper Union in New York City where he received the Gelman Trust Fellowship Award in 2003. Soon thereafter Arsham toured worldwide with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as the company’s stage designer. The experience led to an ongoing collaborative practice which continues as Arsham works with world renowned artists, musicians, designers, and brands including Moët & Chandon, Tiffany’s, Porsche and Dior, among others. In 2021 Arsham was appoint ed the role of creative director of the Cleveland Cavaliers, becoming the first ever fine artist to hold a position of this nature.
Arsham’s uchronic aesthetics revolves around his concept of fictional archaeology. Working in a multitude of disciplines he creates and crystallizes ambiguous in-between spaces and situations, and 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.
Arsham has presented solo exhibitions at the Lotte Art Museum in Seoul, South Korea; Sculpture Center, Cleveland, Ohio; Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa and the Petersen Automobile Museum, Los Angeles, California; Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Leeds, U.K.; Musée Guimet, Paris and MAMO Cité Radieuse Arts Center, Marseille, France; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Dune, Beidaihe, and HOW Museum, Shanghai, China; MOCO Museum London and Amsterdam; Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, Ohio; and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta , Georgia,among others.His work has been presented at MoMA PS1 , The New Museum and LongHouse Reserve in New York, Norton Museum in Palm
Beach, The Athens Biennale in Athens ; Musée Fenaille in Rodez , La Defense in Paris, and Carré d’Art de Nîmes in France, and SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah , Georgia, a mong others.
Arsham’s works are in the public collections of Blanton Museum of Art , Texas; Centre Pompidou, Paris ; Georgia Museum of Art, Athens ; ICA Miami, Florida; Musée Guimet, Paris ; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia ; National Museum of Qatar, Doha ; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Florida; Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) ; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis .
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