ART:

Here’s a thought: Imagine taking classical marble sculptures and throwing them into a trash compactor. That’s one way to describe Adam Parker Smith’s latest exhibition. Housed at The Hole’s new Los Angeles gallery, Crush is a noticeable departure from the American artist’s vibrant aesthetic, that often pits whimsical pop cultural references in totemic structures. 

The show is partly inspired by Smith’s time living in Rome, where he was immersed in an array of buildings and artwork from the age of antiquity. Standing at roughly one cubic meter, each sculpture was made in collaboration with master carvers, a seven-axis reductive robot, and the digital research teams at museums like the Uffizi.

From Apollo of Belvedere, Cupid Triumphant, to Bernini’s David, Smith’s Carrara marble sculptures are radically reimagined to defamiliarize the eye to these canonical references — presenting the viewer with the notion that once upon a time, marble sculptures were no different in capturing daily life as selfies are in the present age — a humorous approach that challenges the way we see and connect with the world. 

Crush is on view at The Hole LA until August 20.

In related news, a new exhibition at The Met will present Greco-Roman sculptures in their original form.

The Hole LA
844 N La Brea Ave,
Los Angeles, CA 90038

Fresh off winning the Fuorisalone Prize for his “Divided Layers” installation in Milan, Daniel Arsham returns to the world of prints in a new release titled GROTTO OF LAOCOÖN. The artwork references a painting of the same name from Arsham’s “UNEARTHED” exhibition in Berlin, where KÖNIG GALERIE was transformed into a hall of antiquities.

Made in conjunction with the revered Brand X Editions in New York City, GROTTO OF LAOCOÖN casts the viewer a 1,000 years in the future, where humans traverse a massive cavern filled with long-forgotten treasures, such as a crumbling sculpture of the Greek seer, Laocoön. Emblematic of his most recent studies, Arsham places both treasured and pop cultural references — from Greco-Roman statues to Pokémoncharacters — in fictionalized time periods, where humans are left with riddles of the communities that once inhabited this world and the objects that they placed their faith into.

GROTTO OF LAOCOÖN is made using 26 individual silkscreens and printed on 48” x 57” archival cotton paper. Limited to an edition of 199, the artwork comes signed and numbered by the artist in a neatly wrapped Arsham Studio-designed linen and silver embossed packaging, along with a holographic seal of authenticity on the included COA card. The print will release this Friday, June 24 at 12pm ET at the artist’s webshop.