DANIEL ARSHAM

The 42-year-old creative on his new Hublot collaboration and the 1986 Porsche he adores.

- Carol Besler

NEW YORK-BASED ARTIST Daniel Arsham gets a thrill from decay—the inevitable decline of ordinary objects. His works consist of eroded casts of human figures or cameras, radios, guitars or teddy bears. He calls them future relics or fossilised artefacts. Inevitably, his creativity has made Arsham, 42, a hot commodity. A recent collaboration with Hublot, called Light & Time, resulted in a 20m sundial made entirely of ice and snow that was installed (with the help of a team of professional snowmakers) at the top of a ski slope in Zermatt. Closer to home, he created a series of art pieces—including a full-body sculpture of Singapore’s late prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew—for Now Is Not The Time, an exhibition in September that commemorated the centenary of Lee’s birth.

His career, though, has been long-lasting, stretching over two decades and encompassing projects in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai and London, with a remarkably broad range of co-conspirators: fashion designers Hedi Slimane of Celine and Kim Jones of Dior and Fendi, and global superstars such as Pharrell Williams and Pokémon. He co-founded Snarkitecture, a studio that investigates the boundaries between art, architecture and design, in 2008.

First thing you do in the morning?

When I’m in New York, I go to my gym on Bond Street pretty much every day. I walk the 10 minutes to get there and I do about 15 minutes of stretching on the roller. Then free weights for 20 minutes and then the bike. I wear an Apple Watch and when it gets to 800 calories, I stop.

Do you have any personal rituals?

After the gym, I go to the studio, very regularly from 10 to 6, like office hours.

Last piece of advice you gave?