Daniel Arsham's 3018 Exhibition
Daniel Arsham's 3018 exhibition at Galerie Perrotin New York is one of the clearest expressions of his concept of fictional archaeology: the idea that the objects of contemporary life, cars, cartoon characters, consumer electronics, already carry the visual grammar of future relics. In 3018, two iconic film cars, a 1961 Ferrari 250GT California and a 1981 DeLorean, are presented as if they were unearthed a thousand years from now: surfaces eroded, panels missing, mechanical components replaced by mineral growths of volcanic ash, pyrite crystal, selenite, and quartz.
What Is the 3018 Exhibition?
3018 was Arsham's fifteenth exhibition with Galerie Perrotin, opening in September 2018. The ground floor of the gallery was transformed into a provisional garage, housing both cars in a state of choreographed decay. The Ferrari 250GT California is the car Ferris Bueller destroyed in the 1986 film. The DeLorean is the time machine from Back to the Future (1985). Both carry deep cultural weight, and Arsham chose them precisely because their significance is immediately legible to anyone who grew up with those films. A pile of rubble at the centre of the installation connects the two sculptures, alongside fabric-draped cartoon character figures bound in rope. As documented by Hypebeast, the exhibition extends Arsham's long-running dystopian vision of culture as archaeological layer.
The Technique: Fictional Archaeology in Practice
Arsham casts his objects in geological materials rather than traditional sculptural media. Volcanic ash, selenite, and quartz are packed into moulds that replicate the original object's surface, then the outer skin is deliberately fractured and removed to reveal the mineral interior. The result looks exactly as if the object had been buried for centuries and recently excavated: the shape is preserved, the surface is destroyed, and what grows in the gaps is something the earth produced, not a factory. This process, applied to mass-produced icons of 20th-century culture, produces an uncanny effect: the familiar made ancient. Arsham describes it as a practice of uchronia, a fictional time that is neither past nor future but a deliberate collapse of both. An in-depth account of his methodology appears in Art and Object's interview with the artist.
Why Cars? The Choice of Objects in 3018
Arsham's selection of the Ferrari 250GT California and the DeLorean is not accidental. Both are objects that already exist at the intersection of design, popular culture, and nostalgia. The Ferrari 250GT California is one of the most beautiful cars ever built, a machine that Enzo Ferrari himself did not want to produce because he considered it too commercial. The DeLorean is the inverse: a commercial failure that became a cultural icon through cinema. In Arsham's hands, both are stripped of monetary value and reduced to their essential cultural residue: shapes that survive their context. The Ferrari 250GT California is a recurring subject in automotive art, including the Wireframe Nose Ferrari 250 California available at TheArsenale, where the car's silhouette is treated as a sculptural object in its own right.
Daniel Arsham and TheArsenale
Arsham has collaborated directly with TheArsenale on several projects, including an eroded Porsche 911 and work for Selfridges, cementing a relationship between his practice and the culture of extraordinary vehicles. For those drawn to automotive art and design objects that treat cars as cultural artifacts, TheArsenale's car art collection includes wireframe sculptures, Ferrari components, and limited-edition art objects. The broader range of design-led objects and home pieces is in the home and interior collection, alongside works by designers and artists who share Arsham's interest in the materiality of contemporary objects. Also at TheArsenale: the Manichino Ferrari 275 GTB, another tribute to the Ferraris that defined the era Arsham mines for his fictional future.
