Various Thoughts

Perrotin New York is pleased to present Various Thoughts, an exhibition of new sculptures, paintings, and drawings by Daniel Arsham. Focusing on his Labyrinth series, the artist explores architecture as a site for memory and historical record, as well as our psychological connection to place. Across the works on view, he plays with slippages between artifact and machine, permanence and disappearance. Cast in sand, marble, and bronze, Arsham's Stairs in the Labyrinth sculptures feature doubled figures that shift from portraiture into labyrinths of architectural stairwells. Unlike a maze, a labyrinth consists of a single, uninterrupted path and has historically been used for meditation, mental clarity, and spiritual reflection. In mythology, labyrinths function both as traps for malevolent forces—most famously Daedalus's confinement of the Minotaur—and as harrowing journeys toward spiritual rebirth. Intentionally left open, Arsham's sculptures invite viewers to lose themselves within their own interior landscapes. In the surrounding paintings, the artist depicts these busts within landscapes where past and future surface in unexpected ways, hovering somewhere between simulated reality and memory. Similarly, his Marble Robot busts are left open, this time revealing a cyborg-like technological interior, like artifacts from the future. They read simultaneously as relics and blueprints, occupying a space between machine and myth. Arsham also creates a sonic experience within the gallery through sculptures that function as stereo speakers, activating the space with ambient sound. Audio Bonsai broadcasts randomized environments—music, rain, wind, or voices—creating an evolving ecosystem. In Classic Speaker, ancient sculptural forms are brought into the present, given a voice in unexpected ways.