Photos: Tiffany Shum
In the largest Japanese-inspired garden he’s ever created, Daniel Arsham will bring the moon to downtown Toronto—along with his iconic brightly coloured sand and sculptures.
The Project
Visitors will be able to take a break from the everyday and Zen out in this surreal world. A 30-foot (nine-metre) light orb resembling the moon will light up a landscape made of colourful sand. The sculptures—enlarged casts of everyday objects—will hint at future archeological finds. Shifting between a centuries-old tradition, an artist’s creative interpretation, and an implied future, the garden plays with motifs of permanence and impermanence creating a work that has the tendency to float in time. This signature style of reimagined architecture continues the artist’s past work—including colour-gradient sand paintings which present raked Zen gardens in a static, vertical format. The artist’s recent shift away from black, white and gray tones became possible with special glasses that correct his colourblindness. These allow him to see a broader, more vibrant spectrum—one he will share with Toronto through this otherworldly and luminous “Lunar Garden.”
The Artist
Working in sculpture, architecture, drawing and film, Daniel Arsham creates ambiguous, in-between spaces, staging what he refers to as “future relics of the present.” His interest in fictional archaeology stems from childhood memories of the wreckage of Hurricane Andrew, which hit his Miami hometown in 1992. Arsham has exhibited in major museums around the globe.