Espace Louis Vuitton Singapore is showing a series of sculptures made of everyday objects recreated in materials such as volcanic ash and crystal by the young talented American contemporary artist, Daniel Arsham, as part of a parallel event of the Singapore Biennale 2013. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Singapore featuring in two different shows: #YESTERDAYSFUTURES (PART I) a solo exhibition; #YESTERDAYSFUTURES (PART II) a collaboration with the School of the Arts, Singapore (SOTA) as part of the ongoing Louis Vuitton – SOTA Arts Excellence Programme.
#YESTERDAYSFUTURES (PART I) at Espace Louis Vuitton Singapore shows a collection of uniquely created eroded sculptures made of everyday objects. The artist also attempts to present the interpretation of the archaeological site of Easter Island through a series of drawings. These gouaches on mylar drawings were featured in Vuitton’s Travel Book collection published in May 2013, and were the beginning of a successful collaboration with Arsham. They are created as a series of unique guide books that combine a travel journal and a sketch book, where the artist had a chance to “interpret the surviving monumental statues of Easter Island in a series of drawings and sculptural works that together create a fictional archaeology informed by his personal experience on the Island.”
#YESTERDAYSFUTURES (PART II) shows a series of the artist’s collaborations with a group of Visual Arts 3rd year students from the School of the Arts, Singapore (SOTA), where the exhibition is held. The collaboration is part of the ongoing Louis Vuitton – SOTA Arts Excellence Programme. In this part of exhibition the artist and his aspiring collaborators identify our everyday objects and re-created them in sand and plaster as decayed replicas, giving them the appearance of being unearthed in a future archaeological site. The students of SOTA spent 6 months with Arsham in the studio working on the exhibits. To the students, it was an invaluable and unforgettable experience of interaction with an international artist.
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“It was quite an extraordinary challenge we all faced. I’d say the biggest challenge was staying in studio weekly for 6 months to work on these items. Even though I really enjoyed it, there’s nothing that really changes the fact that you’ve been working in school for 11 hours, 5 hours of which you spent pouring plaster into sand moulds and dusting the casts afterwards. The perseverance and endurance my fellow group mates showed together with that of the teachers in charge is, I feel, greatly admirable. I could not have asked for a better group of teammates to work with, especially for 6 months.” Caleb Goh (Year 3, Visual Arts)
Arhsam’s unique and enigmatic artistic approach has attracted the interests of renowned galleries, institutions and individuals in the art world, including Emmanuel Perrotin of Galerie Perrotin, Bonnie Clearwater of MOCA Miami, ex-creative director of Dior Homme, Hedi Slimane, and the choreographer Merce Cunningham – who asked him to design the set, lighting and costumes for “eyeSpace,” – an ephemeral performance. The artist, who is known for collaborating with different experts while developing his works, creates spaces that combine art, architecture and design. His deliberately multidisciplinary projects remain difficult to define. He plunges them in the mystery of ruins and lost civilizations, and then projects them into the future, like an architect turned archaeologist.
Prior this collaboration with Louis Vuitton – SOTA in Singapore, the artist was exhibiting in Amsterdam and London. He has established many followers in Europe and American over years, and making his break into the Asian art scene by choosing Singapore as his first stop before Hong Kong.
#YesterdaysFutures (Part I) and #YesterdaysFutures (Part II) are events of the Singapore Biennale: IF the World Changed.
#YesterdaysFutures (Part I) runs from 24 October – March 2014, Sunday – Thursday (10:00 – 23:00), Friday – Saturday (10:00 – midnight) at Espace Louis Vuitton Singapore, Louis Vuitton Island Maison, Marina Bay Sands.
#YesterdaysFutures (Part II) runs from October 24 – November 10, 2013 at SOTA Gallery, 1 Zubir Said Drive, Singapore 227968.
