YEARS FROM NOW

The collaboration between Kim Jones and Daniel Arsham shows that the creative director of Dior Men has once again imbued his work with concepts that are above and beyond mere fashion. Here, Arsham shares his thoughts on the partnership.

- Daniel Arsham

Kaws, Hajime Soyarama and Raymond Pettibon – Kim Jones evidently loves to collaborate with artists who work in an in-between cultural domain. And this time round, for the Dior Spring/Summer 2020 collection, the creative director enlisted Daniel Arsham, a contemporary American artist famed for his eroded architectural sculptures, to work on the range as well as the show space and logo. Conferring Dior the “Future Relics” treatment, Arsham showed what the Maison might look like thousands of years from now.

How do you see the relationship of art and fashion?

During my recent visit and looking through Christian Dior archives, I was pleased and surprised with Monsieur Dior’s early life as a gallery owner. I also see that Monsieur Dior invested largely in supporting artists. I think that fashion has always had a long history and relationship with visual arts.

How do you describe your work in general?

I go through different series of work and fictional archaeological pieces are my way of bringing viewers outside of their own moment in time. Taking their daily lifestyle items, for example a camera or computer, which they connect with and I stretch that into a geological future, a thousand, 10 thousand years from now. In this way the works have a strong connection with time, a kind of dislocation of linear time. I draw a lot of inspiration from travel, seeing different cultures and architecture and the way people interact and place value with experiences on objects and materials.

What about your artistic approach?

My work is really about the reinvention and transformation of the every day. I take objects, experiences, things you’re familiar with and alter them physically. Which I call it a transformation of material from one material to another – or a dislocation of time for the viewer.