Tonight in Los Angeles, Morán Morán Gallery will be opening a solo show from Daniel Arsham entitled Character Study. The title likely references the first part of the New York-based artist’s new body of work, the large scale recreations of his childhood collection of cartoon character patches that adorned his backpack. Created with plaster and in white, as is the formerly color-blind artist’s practice, the pieces which amazingly look to have the texture of cloth, are dusted with pigment chiaroscuro style. Arsham explains – “When I began delving into the use of color, my colorblindness was a factor. I compensated for my lack of understanding the universe of color by viewing my surroundings in terms of light and shadows. This color chiaroscuro technique is an exploration of that.”
The second component of the show is an installation, which evolved from his interest in planetary cycles, consisting of sand piles arranged in a Fibonacci pattern, which surrounds a sculpture of the moon dealing with the concept of then angle of repose. Arsham states – “Through my studies about material and how it relates to form, I’ve begun to experiment with the angle of repose. This idea relates to the painted pigment as well as the sand work. The pigment settles on the material, and due to gravity, only to the highest surfaces. This has to do with the weight of the material and gravity. The shape that these piles of sand form is defined by the angle of repose: the finer the sand, the higher a peak it can achieve; the more coarse the texture, the shallower the peak. This is a rare occasion where you are able to view physical properties of a material based on what the material wants to do itself. The form defines the shape.”
Discuss Daniel Arsham here.
