January 20, 2013

REACH RUIN EXHIBITION / DANIEL ARSHAM


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DANIEL ARSHAM
Reach Ruin Exhibition / December 14 - Mid. March 2013
Fabric & Workshop and Museum / Philadelphia - USA
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DANIEL ARSHAM
Reach Ruin Exhibition / December 14 - Mid. March 2013
Fabric & Workshop and Museum / Philadelphia - USA
Sola Agustsson
Daniel Arsham toys with our conception of space and time. His exhibitions are full of melting walls, pixelated clouds and disorienting sculptures. His objects and installations, like storms, are never static, transforming our notions of temporal stability. The mind-bending showReach Ruin covers three floors, connecting architecture, sculpture, and live dance performances.
The initial inspiration for Reach Ruin was 1992’s Hurricane Andrew and the destructive power of nature. How do you express that kind of natural power through sculpture?
There are a number of works in this show that imagine the destructive power of nature in a way that is constructive. Some pieces use shattered glass and re-form it back into objects. So there’s this idea of a useless, ruined material, like broken glass, transformed back into something that has intention and purpose.
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How affected were you by the 1992 hurricane?
It was a very pivotal experience in my childhood. I had never directly referred to it in my work until recently. This year was the 20th anniversary of the storm, so I found it pertinent to go back and explore this idea of witnessing the house I grew up in, the space I knew, being totally dismembered.When my family emerged from storm the house was basically not there. There were these giant holes in the roof, the windows were blown out, and there was two feet of water throughout the entire house. Ironically when I started doing these works, New York had not experienced a storm like that, but this topic has become much more relevant in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
I also sense a manipulation of time, in addition to the changing forms.

The notion of time is different in natural disasters. Storms have an impact on the physical world in this very rapid way—a storm could last, say, twelve or twenty-four hours. The works in this exhibition imply a slow, geological time frame. There are these very large columns in the exhibition that are eroded and look like some sort of cavern.
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How does Jonah Bokaer’s choreography in Study for Occupant add to this? What was your intention in combining these forms?
In this exhibition, one floor is reserved for a collaborative performance with choreographer Jonah Bokaer. We have collaborated on performances and exhibitions in the past, and in this instance, he related the choreography directly to the sculptures. I had cast twenty different cameras in plaster, and during the routine the dancers actually pick up these plaster cameras and draw with them on the floor. They inscribe circles and line patterns on the ground, almost like you would on a chalkboard. So the cameras are disintegrating over the floor during the performance. We also block out all the lighting and use a blue gel. It makes the space reminiscent of a twilight after a storm, a kind of ethereal quality.
You also have a show in Paris entitled Storm which will be at the FWM as well. Was this also inspired by the 1992 hurricane?
Both of these exhibitions Reach Ruin and Storm relate back to my experience with the hurricane. In some ways they are sister shows. They don’t share the same exact works, but there are overlaps. In Paris, the exhibition has a number of pieces that manipulate the surface of architecture.
There’s a piece, Moving Clock, which is a clock that pushes itself along the wall. I spoke before about this notion of time in contrast to the silence and quickness of a storm. The gesture is quiet and nonviolent. It looks like the wall is made out of fabric and the wall is being manipulated. Architecture can perform in unexpected ways and do things it’s not supposed to be doing, if it’s in a state of movement, melting, or transition. Architecture as we perceive it is not supposed to move. And if if it does, something’s wrong.
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You founded Snarkitecture in 2008 with Alex Mustonen. Can you tell me about that?
Much of my work has been about the manipulation of architecture. Oftentimes I run up against problems with building codes and trying to make things permanent in non-gallery spaces. I began to work with Alex Mustonen, who is now my colleague at Snarkitecture. The name “Snarkitecture” comes from a Lewis Carroll poem “The Hunting of the Snark,” in which a group of misfit idiots search for this thing called a “snark,” but they don’t know what it is or where it is or what it looks like, and they use these white masks to find it. So this search for a formless entity partially informs our practice. We function somewhere between the discipline of art and the discipline of architecture. But in many ways we’re neither.
Reach Ruin is at the Fabric Workshop & Museum in Philadelphia from December 14 through March 31.
Interview and some picture had taken from Artlog' s web page. If you would like to read Daniel Arsham's  biography and exhibition information please click Fabric & Workshop Museum' s web page. You may visit to see his others work and more information to click his own web page. Some pictures taken from his web page to give general information.
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DANIEL ARSHAM


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