Daniel Arsham Presents MEMORY INDEX at KÖNIG MUNICH | SILOS

Munich, Germany – 17 September 2025 – 21 December 2025

KÖNIG BERGSON is proud to announce MEMORY INDEX, the gallery’s second solo exhibition in Munich by internationally acclaimed New York–based artist Daniel Arsham. Running from 17 September to 21 December 2025, the exhibition opens with a private event on 16 September from 6–10 PM at the Silos, Am Bergson Kunstkraftwerk 2. The show presents a comprehensive selection of Arsham’s recent works in sculpture, painting, and drawing, creating an immersive environment where memory, architecture, and time intersect.

Set within the raw industrial setting of the Silos, MEMORY INDEX transforms the space into a multidimensional exploration of perception and temporality. The exhibition unfolds as a constellation of interconnected works, each resonating with the next and inviting visitors to navigate shifting experiences of place, scale, and materiality. Arsham’s practice, rooted in explorations of decay, archaeology, and the passage of time, finds a particularly compelling home within the Silos, whose cavernous interiors and industrial textures amplify the dialogue between past, present, and imagined futures.

Images James Law

Daniel Arsham: Excavating Time

Daniel Arsham has built an international reputation for works that blur the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, and performance. Based in New York, he has collaborated across disciplines—including fashion, architecture, and film—while maintaining a singular focus on how time, memory, and decay inform the human experience. His signature aesthetic often involves the transformation of everyday objects into crystalline or eroded forms, creating a sense of speculative archaeology.

MEMORY INDEX represents a continuation and evolution of Arsham’s longstanding inquiries into the nature of memory and the structures that shape it. The exhibition emphasizes the artist’s interest in how physical spaces can hold, reflect, and distort memory, and how imagined forms can evoke emotional and temporal resonance.

The Silos: Industrial Space as Canvas

The exhibition is staged in the Silos, part of Munich’s Kunstkraftwerk complex. The Silos’ raw, industrial architecture provides a dramatic backdrop for Arsham’s work, emphasizing contrasts between permanence and ephemerality. High ceilings, exposed concrete, and vast open interiors allow his sculptures and installations to breathe while highlighting their architectural qualities. Within this environment, Arsham’s works assume an almost archaeological presence, as if excavated from a future civilization or recovered from an alternate timeline.

Labyrinth Sculptures: Architecture of Memory

At the center of MEMORY INDEX are Arsham’s Labyrinth sculptures, classical busts reimagined as architectural explorations. Embedded within each bust are intricate staircases, narrow corridors, and miniature human figures. These works transform portraiture into a physical meditation on memory, introspection, and the passage of time.

Visitors encountering these pieces are invited to reflect on the relationship between form and content, past and present, interiority and exteriority. The sculptures’ labyrinthine qualities evoke both classical sculpture and miniature architectural models, suggesting that memory itself is structured like a series of rooms, hallways, and hidden passages.

Paintings and Drawings: Rivers, Terrains, and Imagined Landscapes

Complementing the sculptures are a series of drawings and paintings depicting rivers, imagined terrains, and landscapes that straddle the boundary between the familiar and the otherworldly. These two-dimensional works introduce a contemplative counterpoint to the physicality and monumentality of the Silos. Their subtle, evocative forms encourage quiet reflection, allowing visitors to move between the tangible and the imagined.

By juxtaposing architectural sculptures with expansive and fluid drawings, Arsham highlights the interplay between human perception and the structures of memory. The exhibition thus creates an immersive dialogue, encouraging audiences to navigate both real and imagined spaces simultaneously.

Unearthed Relics and Temporal Play

One of the most compelling aspects of MEMORY INDEX is Arsham’s ability to evoke the sense of works unearthed from a future past. The Silos’ industrial surfaces lend themselves to this narrative: sculptures appear as if excavated from layers of time, while paintings and drawings hover between permanence and transience.

This tension between permanence and impermanence, object and presence, ruin and resonance, forms a throughline in Arsham’s practice. By presenting objects that feel simultaneously real and speculative, the artist challenges conventional understandings of temporality and invites viewers to reconsider the ways in which memory, history, and imagination intersect.

Resonance with Munich and European Audiences

MEMORY INDEX marks an important moment for both Arsham and the Munich art scene. European audiences, long attuned to explorations of history, memory, and architectural space, will find resonance in Arsham’s approach. The Silos themselves, as industrial relics of modernity, create a context in which the artist’s preoccupations with archaeology, decay, and futurism are amplified.

The exhibition also speaks to broader cultural concerns, including the impermanence of human achievement, the preservation of memory, and the interaction between nature, architecture, and imagination. In this way, MEMORY INDEX transcends its immediate setting, offering insights into universal questions about time, perception, and human experience.

The Visitor Experience

Walking through MEMORY INDEX, visitors encounter spaces that continuously shift between interior and exterior, between monumentality and intimacy. The labyrinthine sculptures encourage exploration, while the landscapes invite contemplation. Each encounter reinforces the exhibition’s central themes: memory as both personal and collective, tangible and ephemeral.

The gallery has carefully arranged the works to create a narrative flow, guiding viewers through interconnected spaces that feel both excavated and constructed. The Silos’ industrial textures amplify the sense of discovery, lending the exhibition an aura of archaeological intrigue. Visitors emerge with a heightened awareness of how memory, architecture, and time intersect in both physical and imagined spaces.

MEMORY INDEX as a Meditation on Time

Daniel Arsham’s MEMORY INDEX offers a profound reflection on memory, temporality, and the structures that shape human experience. Through a combination of sculpture, drawing, and painting, the exhibition transforms the Silos into a space of introspection, discovery, and wonder.

By blending the architectural, the sculptural, and the imagined, Arsham continues to push the boundaries of contemporary art. MEMORY INDEX invites audiences to consider how memory is constructed, how it decays, and how it can be preserved through artistic practice. In doing so, the exhibition affirms Arsham’s position as one of the most innovative and influential artists working today.

MEMORY INDEX is open from 17 September to 21 December 2025 at KÖNIG MUNICH | SILOS, Am Bergson Kunstkraftwerk 2, 81245 Munich. The opening reception will be held on 16 September from 6–10 PM.

© Images James Law