These lifesize sculptures are at the Petersen Automotive Museum—and probably won’t turn you into a zombie.
While the art world has long been fascinated with the “art car” (particularly BMW) or sculptures made out of cars (like Cadillac Ranch), one thing you don’t see all that often are realistic sculptures made from minerals like quartz or marble. Not only has artist Daniel Arsham created a unique set of classic cars out of geological materials, but his take goes further to make them seem like they are eroding away and returning to the Earth from which they came. Or, you could see them looking like they were exposed to the infection from HBO’s The Last of Us.
These artistic sculptures of classic Porsches, a Ferrari and a Mustang are really otherworldly looking. These sculptures certainly resemble the cars they represent, but then you see that they appear to be eroding away and exposing quartz, selenite, pyrite, and volcanic ash that lies beneath them. This is the signature style of artist Daniel Arsham, where he mixes pop culture icons and imagery, with an eroding twist. It’s as if they are breaking down into the materials that Arsham used to create these scupltures.
The wild part is more than the fact they are 1:1 representations of the vehicles they depict. The interiors of these cars have been fully carved out, and the doors are even able to open, but those elements are also eroding away and exposing the crystalline structure beneath. As an added bonus, Arsham’s project from 2022, a 1955 Porsche 356 Speedster known as “Bonsai” will also be on display. It borrows from a Japanese aesthetic view of accepting imperfections and transcendence known as Wabi-sabi. The body is stripped down to its original metal and exposing all of the wear and tear that nearly 70 years has done to it. The interior features a patchwork of selvedge denim and traditional Japanese fabrics and indigo-dyed boro.
You’ll find it all on display and titled as the Arsham Auto Motive exhibit in the Armand Hammer Foundation Gallery of the Petersen Automotive Museum. The exhibit opens to the public on February 25 and will remain on display until November 26, 2023.
Photography by Guillaume Ziccarelli and provided by Daniel Arsham and Perrotin.
