Daniel Arsham
Casts the present as though it had been dug up in a thousand years, eroded and crystallised.
Daniel Arsham was born in Cleveland in 1980 and grew up in Miami, where a hurricane took the roof off his house when he was twelve — an origin story he has used to explain an interest in buildings failing. He is colourblind, which is the practical reason so much of the work is white, grey and ash. The sculptures he is known for cast familiar objects, a film camera, a basketball, a games console, in materials that read as geology — selenite, calcite, volcanic ash, crystal — and then erode them, so a thing made this decade arrives looking excavated. He co-founded the design practice Snarkitecture, and has worked with Dior, Porsche, Tiffany and Pokemon.
Almost everything is editioned, and edition size is the first thing to establish: the same sculpture may exist in five, in five hundred, or as a unique artist's proof, and the difference is not visible in the object. Original packaging, the certificate of authenticity and the numbered base or underside all form part of what is being sold, and a piece separated from its paperwork is a harder sale. Condition matters more than with most contemporary sculpture, because the eroded surfaces are genuinely fragile and chip at the edges.
If you own a work by Daniel Arsham
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.