Holding Hands

Holding Hands is a wall-mounted sculpture made in 2015 by the American artist Daniel Arsham. Two life-size forearms, cast in pale grey hydrostone, cross at the wrists and end in clasped hands. In places their surface has broken away, exposing a glittering crystalline core of selenite. The work measures about 17 by 14 by 5 inches (43 by 36 by 13 centimeters) and belongs to the period of Arsham's "Fictional Archeology", the idea that present-day objects and bodies might be dug up in the distant future as fossils.

What you are looking at

The two arms form a V shape on the wall, rising from the clasped hands at the bottom to two broken ends at the top. They are cut off below the elbow, as if snapped from a statue. The hands interlock gently, fingers wrapped around the other hand, a gesture of tenderness or reassurance.

The surface is the point. Most of it is smooth, matte and stone-like, with skin creases and knuckles faithfully cast. But patches of it look eroded, eaten away into rough, pitted cavities, and inside them sparkle clusters of crystal. The broken tops of the arms show the same crystalline interior. The figures cast sharp shadows on the white wall, doubling the gesture.

How it was made

Arsham casts body parts and everyday objects from life in gypsum-based materials such as hydrostone, and then creates "eroded" areas into which he sets crystals or mineral aggregates such as selenite, pyrite or quartz. The finished pieces look like geological specimens or archaeological finds, as though the human form had partly turned to rock. He works in a palette of greys and whites that he has linked to his own color blindness.

In autumn 2015, Galerie Perrotin in Hong Kong showed Arsham's exhibition Fictional Archeology, which included eroded figures and body fragments of this kind. The legacy record for this page connects Holding Hands to that show; we have not confirmed it was exhibited there.

Meaning

Arsham's work plays with time. A gesture made in an instant, two people holding hands, is presented as if it had survived for thousands of years, like the plaster casts of victims at Pompeii. The crystals suggest both decay and growth: the body is wearing away, but something new and beautiful is forming inside. The piece can be read as a meditation on love outlasting the bodies that express it, and as a modern memento mori.

The artist

Daniel Arsham, born in Cleveland in 1980 and raised in Miami, co-founded the design studio Snarkitecture and has collaborated with fashion brands, musicians and the Pokémon Company as well as exhibiting widely in galleries and museums. For other works in the catalogue about time and decay, see Solastalgia, The Last Day of Pompeii and Memento Mori & Vanitas.