Daniel Arsham

danielarsham

This painting is part of an ongoing exploration of nature and time in my work. Since I was in school, I’ve always been drawn to 19th century American landscape painters like Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt who created vast and theatrical visions of nature. It wasn’t cool to like this work then and it wasn’t what other students were in to. These paintings were not just about geography or nature, they were about psychology. about the spiritual weight of a place. In my new painting that tradition meets something more archaeological and speculative. A colossal head lies partially reclaimed by water and jungle. It suggests a lost civilization or maybe a future where our present becomes myth. Like my sculptures this work plays with time. It imagines ancient forms in surreal environments that feel both dreamlike and real. The figures in the water could be explorers or survivors or even worshippers. We don’t know and That uncertainty is the point. It reflects how we create meaning from ruins. How nature moves on without us. How growth and decay can exist in the same frame. A lot of my work is about erosion. Not just the physical kind but cultural erosion too. I’m interested in the idea that future generations might uncover traces of our time the way we uncover pieces of ancient empires. This painting is a way of thinking through that idea. It’s about memory and imagination and the strange power of landscape to hold onto these feelings.

05.06 20:30

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