In the Instagram post, Chan, seen sipping from a mug that matches the statue’s color, playfully commented, “The more of me the better?” The statue’s design, with its flowing silver garment, looks like a mashup of ancient Roman Sculpture and the T-1000 from Terminator 2. According to Zuckerberg, the inspiration came from the former: he captioned the photo “bringing back the Roman tradition of making sculptures of your wife.”

The sculpture features a reflective silver robe wrapped around a blueish green figure that brings to mind a photoshop-smooth version of the weathered and oxidized copper of the Statue of Liberty in New York. The statue’s striking color and size led to a flurry of online comparisons to characters from “Avatar” and jokes about Zuckerberg being the ultimate “wife guy.”

Zuckerberg and Chan met in 2003 while both were students at Harvard. They have been married since 2012 and share three daughters.

Arsham has worked across sculpture, architecture, drawing and film to explore his concept of “fictional archaeology” He most recently opened the exhibition “Phases” at Fotografiska New York earlier this year and he has long been represented by Perrotin. Last month, Arsham was accused of violating national labor laws by employees of his studio, according to a complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board.

In November 2023, employees of the artist’s studio, officially called Daniel Arsham, Inc., voted to join Wholesale and Chain Store Food Employees Union, Local 338. According to the complaint, prior to the union election Arsham violated the National Labor Relations Act by requiring his employees to attend a meeting at his Long Island City headquarters “for the purpose of exposing employees to the employer’s statements in opposition to the union,” according to a spokesperson for the National Labor Relations Board.

The complaint also alleges that a labor consultant threatened a stricter enforcement of policies if they were to vote in favor of unionization and said employees could be fired for violating those policies. The complaint cites one employee who was purportedly disciplined and fired in retaliation for their union support.

The complaint was filed by NLRB’s Region 29-Brooklyn’s Regional Director after the agency found the allegations credible following an investigation. The Regional Director’s office will first seek a settlement between the studio and its employees that includes the following actions from Arsham: a meeting in which Arsham reads a notice of employee rights to the staff, which will then be posted and electronically distributed; a mandatory training with a NLRB’s Region 29 for all managers on employee rights as detailed in the National Labor Relations Act; and compensation to the “unlawfully” terminated employee for lost wages and benefits. In addition, Arsham is asked to send the employee a letter of apology.

If a settlement cannot be reached, there will be a hearing with the NLRB Administrative Law Judge on October 15 in Brooklyn.

ARTnews has contacted Arsham’s studio for comment.

The move reflects an effort to broaden the reach of art beyond traditional galleries and into the digital realm. Laura Simhon, eBay’s art and collectibles manager in France, said in a press release that the partnership served as an “opportunity to open the doors of an internationally renowned gallery to as many people as possible! Democratizing access to fine objects and helping our users to find hidden gems is an essential part of our mission.”

Gallery founder Emmanuel Perrotin said working with eBay would not only raise the Perrotin Store’s visibility but also help make art more accessible. “I grew up in a family that couldn’t afford to buy art, but my parents had such an appreciation of culture that when we went to museums we always found something to buy in the shop. Our house was full of posters,” he said in the release. “This idea has stayed with me throughout the development of the gallery.”  

Perrotin opened in Paris in 1990 and has since added locations from New York to Shanghai. Perrotin Store opened in Paris in 2011, primarily as a bookshop. Soon prints, editions, accessories, and apparel became available and additional stores opened in New York, Seoul, Tokyo, and Shanghai.

Like the Perrotin Store’s own website, where a magnet featuring Jean-Michel Othoniel’s Gold Lotus (produced by Réunion de musées nationaux Grand Palais) goes for $5 plus shipping, the eBay store seems aimed at shoppers in every tax bracket.

Of the 97 items listed, among the least expensive items is the second printing of the Barry McGee fanzine Fuzz Gathering, which costs €18 (about $19.50). An Elmgreen & Dragset sculpture made of waxed synthetic plaster, stainless steel, and plexiglass, Untitled (After the Lovers) (produced by Perrotin, 2023), runs €6,000 (about $6,500).

The Headlines

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. Artist Daniel Arsham, a veteran of art-fashion collaborations, is launching his own fashion label, Business of Fashion reports. Named Objects IV Life, the company—a joint venture with brand accelerator Tomorrow—is releasing its first line today with Kith in Paris and online, and it consists of unisex workwear. In other art-fashion news, Cultured highlights Louis Vuitton artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière’s interest in Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, and Harper’s Bazaar has a story on the late, great artist and designer Virgil Abloh, whose retrospective is about to open at the Brooklyn Museum.

AUCTION ACTION. Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov auctioned his Nobel Peace Prize at Heritage Auctions for $103.5 million; the proceeds are going to help refugees from Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reports. The winning bidder was not identified. The first comic book to feature Wonder Woman, an All Star Comics issue from 1941, also just sold at Heritage, for $1.62 million, Hypebeast notes. And at a far lower price point: A 1747 cookbook that is said to have the first English recipes for curry is being offered through London’s Forum Auctions with a $5,000 estimate, per Newsweek.

The Digest

Artist Thomas J Price got the profile treatment from Ferren Gipson. Today Price will unveil two sculptures in London that honor the Windrush generation—immigrants from the Caribbean between 1948 and 1971. [Financial Times]

Speaking of monuments in the United Kingdom, a bronze statue by Ian Wolter commemorating the Kindertransport—the evacuation of some 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, from Germany to the U.K. beginning in 1938—will be unveiled in Harwich in September. [BBC News]

South African artist William Kentridge said that the U.K. should work to address its colonial-era monuments. “The question should be: ‘How do we deal with our blighted past?’ rather than defending it and saying it was nothing but a heroic history,” he said. [The Art Newspaper]

Photographer Mary McCartney has partnered with Gagosian director Georgina Cohen to present a show of McCartney’s work at Château La Coste in Provence, France. “I hope the viewer can see a picture of a tree and feel the breeze, almost like they are stepping into it,” the artist said. [AnOther]

To mark its 40th anniversary, the venturesome U.K. music magazine the Wire has made its entire archive free until the start of Monday in the British Isles. [The Wire via @alexmarshall81/Twitter]

CBC took a look at the work of two Indigenous-led firms, Two Row Architect and Smoke Architecture. [CBC]

The Kicker

DIFFERENCE AND REPETITION. If you have not read artist Takashi Murakami’s essay for the New York Times “Big Ideas” series, which ran a few days ago, give it a click. We won’t spoil his entire thesis here, but Murakami describes two experiences—one with a Jeff Koons sculpture, the other with a premium coffee—and explains how his opinion of them shifted with a bit more knowledge. Here he is on his second sip of that cup of joe: “I drank again. Then and there, my consciousness click-clacked and restructured itself. I have never had such delicious coffee, I remember thinking.” [NYT]

A wide range of work is available this year. Proven street-artists like KAWS, Banksy, and Invader set the tone of the sale, bringing in their now classic influence on the contemporary scene, and lesser known artists have also been folded into the show.

Artists like Katherine Bernhardt have found themselves exposed to a new collecting regime through auctions like Trespassing Bernhardt, whose work will be available at this year’s sale, saw record prices for her work at the 2020 Trespassing auction. Pink Panther + Instagram + Orchids realized $125,000 against a high estimate of $30,000.

Lindsay Griffith, Head of Department, Prints and Multiples at Christie’s New York, commented that there is plenty of growth in this sector. Griffith told ARTnews over the phone that “53 out of 210 bidders were completely new to Christie’s” during Trespassing 2020. 

“There’s so much energy in this space,” Griffith continued, “particularly because of the ubiquity of Instagram and other image sharing platforms which have really amplified interest in these artists whose work translates quite well online. That’s certainly how I think a lot of these younger artists are being discovered by this buying audience and that’s really where we’re seeing that interest grow.”

Mad Dog Jones, A Bag of Oranges, 2019-2021

Trespassing will be the first online multi-category sale at Christie’s to include NFTs, which appeal to collectors who are also energized by street-art inspired work. Michah Dowbak’s (also known as Mad Dog Jones) NFT A Bag of Oranges (2019-2021) is up for sale. Dowak originally sold A Bag of Oranges as a photo print at Tokyo’s Diesel Gallery in 2019. The piece was adapted for sale as an NFT with Dowbak animating several elements of the image, including a filter of snowfall that quietly accumulates in the background on a loop. There is no estimate for A Bag of Oranges. The bidding will start at $100, as is the case with the other NFTs included in the show.

Daniel Arsham’s collaboration with Dior is also featured in the sale. Dior Eroded Basketball (2020) is a white resin cast basketball with quartz crystals studding the points of “erosion.” It is number 84 of an edition of 250 and is estimated at $10,000-$15,000. Three of KAWS’ “Four Foot Companion” (2007) sculptures will be available, alongside three “Four Foot Dissected Companion” (2009) sculptures which show the figures’ muscles, bones, and guts. Each “Companion” sculpture comes in different colors are all estimated at $85,000-$125,000.

KAWS, Four Foot Dissected Companion, 2009

Jeff Gluck, the program’s founder, is an intellectual property lawyer focused on artists’ rights. He recently worked with street artist Smash 137, who sued General Motors after the company used the artist’s work for its advertisements. Smash 137 alleged that the car company did so without their consent.

In an interview, Gluck said the new platform is the first of its kind. CXIP will essentially provide the means for verifying NFTs, offering greater security for buyers and artists alike. The platform could be “integrated into any NFT marketplace, auction house, and so forth,” Gluck told ARTnews. “The idea is for all market participants to adopt this better, standardized minting solution, creating consistency and compatibility through the industry.”

Already, CXIP Labs is working with a variety of creators who are hoping to protect their digital assets, including artists Lucien Smith and Jen Stark and streetwear designer Darren Romanelli. With the recent appointment of artist Daniel Arsham as chief brand officer, CXIP is slated to officially launch in July. 

Much like street artists, digital artists often face the possibility that their work will be stolen or copied by others. Gluck’s new initiative could potentially remedy this problem. The inspiration for CXIP Labs was a result of the 2019 Supreme Court ruling Fourth Estate Pub. Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, which requires artworks to be copyrighted in order from them to be legally protected.

Finding the traditional copyright system antiquated and difficult to use, Gluck began putting together a simplified online portal for artists to easily copyright their work. He quickly realized that this could be used as a verification service for NFTs and used it as the basis for starting CXIP Labs. 

CXIP’s authenticated NFTs would appear with a verified symbol, similar to Twitter’s blue check mark, that signals to buyers that the works are coming directly from artists, no matter where the pieces appear. Minting processes, wherein a digital asset is recorded on the blockchain, thereby creating a smart contract. These kinds of contracts are currently offered by different platforms, but they can vary wildly, leaving open opportunities for counterfeiters.

Factors such as the quality of how the work is accessed, royalty agreements, ownership, and more change depending on what platform was used to mint the NFT. The resulting contracts are often incompatible with other marketplaces, making it difficult to trade artworks across platforms. CXIP, by contrast, will allow for cross-platform trading, and its system can be used to reduce scams and voided contracts, ensuring that artists continue to receive royalties as their NFTs are copied and circulated online.

Verifying an NFT through CXIP has many benefits but ultimately copyright registration is necessary for legal protections. “If you don’t register your work, you have no opportunity to legally enforce your rights against someone who is using your work without permission,” Gluck said. But that doesn’t mean it will fully provide protection in court. “You can’t walk into a courtroom and say, ‘I put this on the blockchain, I can enforce my rights, because it’s not recognized [as proof of ownership].’”

Other startups are also attempting to create authentication processes, but Gluck claims they fall short: “Even if you tied a separate token of authenticity to an NFT that was minted in a flawed way, those flaws are still there, and the NFT is still vulnerable.”

Arsham will be charged with revitalizing the iconic team’s entire brand identity, a task that spans managing the Cavalier’s social media accounts to designing team apparel. The long-term deal also makes Arsham a minority partner in the team, another first for a collaboration between an artist and professional sports franchise.

Arsham, who is represented by Perrotin gallery in New York, has gained international recognition for his multimedia practice at the intersection of sculpture and architecture. His best known works are eroded casts of cultural objects, from a Delorean, to VHS tapes, to Romanesque busts. The artist was introduced to the Gilberts through the Detroit-based gallerists Anthony and JJ Curis, who presented work by Arsham at the Cranbrook Art Museum and assembled the Gilbert’s art holdings, known as the Fieldhouse collection.

Though the Cavaliers will be Arsham’s priority, the artist will also collaborate with other sports franchises owned by Gilbert, including the Cleveland Monsters in the American Hockey League, the NBA’s Canton Charge, and the Cavs Legion e-sports team.

“Becoming a big brand in the NBA has historically been about geographic location or having a superstar player,” Grant Gilbert, the Gilberts’ son and the team’s director of brand strategy, told the Wall Street Journal. He added that “no team has taken it upon itself to do the things we’re talking about doing in terms of building a new narrative.”

Lutz Bacher, Magic Mountain, 2015.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND GREENE NAFTALI, NEW YORK

Over the weekend, Daniel Arsham, the artist known for collaborations with Pharrell and a coterie of famous admirers, posted an image to Instagram that would appear familiar to anyone who’s seen Bacher’s contribution to “Greater New York”: gray-green spiky foam points amassed in a pile. But these are from Arsham’s film Future Relic, and they do look quite a lot like Magic Mountain.

“#GreaterNewYork ?” Arsham wrote in the Instagram caption under his original foam set.

Pieces of a set for Daniel Arsham, Future Relic, 2015.

DANIEL ARSHAM (@DANIELARSHAM)/VIA INSTAGRAM

“I was in Brazil for an exhibition of my work when PS1 opened,” he said in an e-mail. “The way that I found out about this work was that so many people were tagging me on images of it. I just thought it was a curious similarity.”

Arsham explained that this particular element of the set was seen most prominently on his social media feed, meaning that any sort of thievery would have required some serious Instagram stalking.

“Through research I discovered an Anechoic Chamber at Bell Labs that was slated for demolition—that is where the cones in my film came from,” Arsham wrote. “If they are indeed the same materials, there would have been no way for them to know it was my work unless they follow my Instagram and had seen the set design then.”

A representative at Greene Naftali, Bacher’s New York gallery, denied that the work had been influenced by Arsham in any way.

Of course, given Bacher’s history of toying with authorship and appropriation, this could all be a little joke that Arsham isn’t in on. And regardless of the intent, when it comes to imitation, Arsham seems like more of a “highest form of flattery” guy.

“If they are indeed the same exact objects, then all I can say is that the artist has a very good eye!” he said.

That’s why it’s so alluring a format for artists to share their output, their esthetic, and their obsessions. Familiar names in the Instagram directory include Wangechi Mutu, Takashi Murakami, Ai Weiwei, KAWS, Ryan Trecartin, Erik Parker, Brooke Dunn Parker, Dzine, Renee Cox, Friends with You, Shepard Fairey, Sofia Maldonado, Zoe Strauss, JR, Os Gêmeos, and Sanford Biggers. Some of these artists’ feeds are more casual, some more curated, some more personal, some more promotional. Most are a mix of everything. Here are screenshots from a few that stand out.

Toyin Odutola posts portraits of herself, her family, and her friends.

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY, NY.

Ryan McGinness took advantage of the Instagram format to create a new body of work. His feed consists of “grams”: phrases or ideas culled from his sketchbooks and matched with an appropriate typeface. These are rendered in knockout type inside circles. At this writing he had posted 135; he’s going for 2,000.

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.

Art and family in the feed of Laurie Simmons: images of daughter Lena Dunham, husband Carroll Dunham, and her own work from her 2001-4 “Instant Decorator” series.

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.

The writing on the wall: José Parlá chronicles his recent project with JR in Cuba.

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.

Hank Willis Thomas makes you wonder what the meaning of is is.

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY, NY.

Faile in the studio (working on their New York City Ballet collaboration) and beyond.

COURTESY OF FAILE.

The passions of Shinique Smith.

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.

Body of Work: Daniel Arsham.

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.

Olek, the artist whose medium is crochet.

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND JONATHAN LEVINE GALLERY.

Nikki S. Lee, whose medium is self-portraits.

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.

Gary Baseman posts photos, paintings, drawings, and other pictures that can “have the viewer learn something personal about me during the course of my day.”

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.

Face time with Kenny Scharf.

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.

Using the app Draw Something (and another of her own design called Draw Art) Paige Dansinger uses her finger to recreate famous artworks.

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.

When Daniel Arsham first met Merce Cunningham in 2006, he was a 24-year-old artist who’d recently graduated from Cooper Union. The two were introduced because Cunningham was looking for a local artist to design the set for his piece eyeSpace, which was to open in Miami the following year (though he now lives in Brooklyn, Arsham had moved to Miami after completing school). Arsham has worked with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) several times since, both before and after the choreographer’s death in 2009.

MCDC’s final six performances—capping a two-year legacy tour planned by Cunningham prior to his death—will appear at the Park Avenue Armory, Dec. 29–31, and Arsham has been tapped to design the stage décor. “We wouldn’t be doing anything differently had Merce been around for this,” Arsham says. “But we’re all paying a little bit more attention.”

Arsham’s design takes full advantage of the Drill Hall’s 80-plus-foot ceilings, from which he will suspend eight giant “clouds”: oblong forms, the smallest the size of a car, made up of clustered-together colored spheres. The lumpy forms are based on photos of clouds that have been enlarged to such a degree that the color of each grapefruit-sized sphere represents a single pixel. Arsham showed similar, though smaller-scale, sculptures made of colored Ping-Pong balls at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris last year.

In keeping with Cunningham’s preferred working methods throughout his career,  the pair had an unorthodox collaboration. The only information Cunningham would provide Arsham was the length of the performance and where it would take place. Cunningham would simply say, “Do whatever you want.” His only requests, Arsham told A.i.A., were that the designer make sure the set wasn’t flammable and that he didn’t do anything to injure the dancers. Cunningham typically divided his performances into three parts—the choreography, the stage design and the music. All of the collaborators involved worked independently, and the three elements came together only when the piece was performed live.

Arsham found this method of working “both liberating and somewhat restrictive.” His latest commission, begun after the choreographer’s death, hasn’t been much different from previous projects.

Many of Arsham’s stage designs—for MCDC and for his ongoing collaboration with the choreographer Jonah Bokaer, a former MCDC dancer—involve architectural elements that he and/or the dancers interact with. For a MCDC tour in France in 2009, Arsham built a wall on stage that he cut holes into during the performance, slowly revealing a light source behind the wall. Replica, a piece he did with Bokaer, included a giant white cube in the middle of the stage. Arsham (from inside the cube) and the dancers on stage slowly eroded the foam-and-plaster structure by knocking into it and pulling it apart. Another recent work, Recess, which premiered last summer at Jacob’s Pillow in Massachusetts, features a large sheet of white paper that Arsham (hidden under the paper) and Bokaer (the sole dancer) fold and manipulate into mountain- and iceberg-like forms.

The Merce Cunningham Dance Company will perform at the Park Avenue Armory, 6:30 pm and 9 pm, Dec. 29–31. Daniel Arsham’s show “the fall, the ball, and the wall” will be on view at OHWOW, Los Angeles, Jan. 20–Feb. 16, 2012.