Daniel Arsham: Ten Years of the Eroded DeLorean, an Icon Frozen in the Future

Ten years ago, Daniel Arsham propelled a DeLorean into eternity. Today, his sculpture stands as a pivotal work in an artistic journey that has continually questioned our relationship with time, memory, and objects.

The famous Eroded DeLorean sculpture by Daniel Arsham

In September 2018, Perrotin Gallery in New York hosted 3018, an exhibition that marked a major turning point in Daniel Arsham’s career. It was within this context that he unveiled Eroded DeLorean, a monumental sculpture of the legendary DeLorean DMC-12 — a timeless icon made famous by the Back to the Future trilogy. But in Arsham’s vision, the vehicle is neither flashy nor functional: corroded by crystals and cracked like an ancient ruin, the car appears to have weathered the passage of centuries. Rather than offering a nostalgic reproduction, the artist presents an archaeological vision of the present, projected hundreds of years into the future.

Instead of casting an entire car in a foundry — a structure that would have struggled under its own weight — Arsham chose to start with a real, functional model of the iconic vehicle. He then disassembled it and reassembled it, manually adding the eroded elements piece by piece.

A Speculative Archaeology of the Present

Since the beginning of his career, contemporary artist Daniel Arsham has been developing a unique practice he refers to as “archaeology of the future.” By combining modern industrial materials (steel, resin, fiberglass) with mineral elements such as quartz, pyrite, or volcanic ash, he transforms familiar objects into contemporary fossils, imagining what they might look like after being abandoned for centuries—or even millennia.

Above: an Eroded Porsche 911 Turbo, presented by Class Art Biarritz. Discover our selection of Daniel Arsham’s works here.

Eroded DeLorean is one of the most accomplished examples of this approach: its gullwing doors frozen mid-opening, the corroded and cracked bodywork, and the surface overtaken by natural crystal formations. Everything in this sculpture evokes the inexorable passage of time, decay, and a certain poetic beauty born from erosion.

Through this aesthetic, Arsham explores collective material memory, the fragility of cultural icons, and the accelerated obsolescence of the objects that define our era. The DeLorean—once a symbol of futurism in the 1980s—becomes in his hands a relic of the past, a museum piece for imagined future civilizations.

Future Relic and Eroded: A Reflection on Impermanence

Eroded DeLorean is part of the much broader Future Relic series, which Arsham began in the early 2010s.

In this collection, the artist selects iconic objects from the 20th and 21st centuries — smartphones, video game consoles, television sets, analog cameras — and transforms them into deteriorated artifacts, as if unearthed after a cataclysm or the collapse of civilization.

The Eroded series follows this same logic, while placing greater emphasis on physical erosion: everything appears corroded, crumbling, gnawed away by nature reclaiming its place over human technology.

Eroded Surfboard, by Daniel Arsham.

These works go far beyond a purely aesthetic exercise: they raise a fundamental question in our era of rampant consumerism and planned obsolescence. What traces will we leave behind? What will remain of our hyperconnected society in a thousand years—or even just a few centuries?

Through his minimalist and mineral approach, Arsham invites us to rethink temporality: it’s no longer just about looking back with nostalgia, but about imagining how our present might one day be perceived as a distant prehistory.

A Cult Artwork

Since its first unveiling, Eroded DeLorean has achieved cult status in the world of contemporary art.

The sculpture has traveled through several major exhibitions and has even inspired multiple iterations. In 2021, Daniel Arsham released a limited-edition 1:8 scale version of the work, capped at 500 pieces. These new editions were mostly offered through art galleries, such as Class Art Biarritz. Each model—crafted in matte white resin with meticulously reproduced details—was delivered with white gloves, elegant packaging designed by Arsham Studio, and a holographic certificate of authenticity.

Interior of the Eroded DeLorean cabin

More recently, Eroded DeLorean was one of the centerpiece works of BANGKOK 3024, an immersive installation held at Central Embassy in Thailand in 2024. The sculpture stood alongside other crystallized artifacts, reaffirming Arsham’s ability to merge pop culture with existential reflection.

The critical reception was overwhelmingly positive. Many commentators praised Arsham’s ability to “crystallize” — both literally and figuratively — the contemporary anxiety surrounding impermanence and oblivion.

Studio work during the creation of the sculpture by Daniel Arsham

When Objects Become Relics

What is striking, ten years after its creation, is how Eroded DeLorean remains deeply relevant. In a world where technologies and trends succeed one another at dizzying speed—where the present is constantly replaced by a new present—Arsham’s work acts as a time-slowing device.

It forces us to see the objects that populate our daily lives in a new light. What we perceive as solid, obvious, eternal—a phone, a radio, a car, a sneaker—can quickly become a ruined fragment, a relic emptied of its original function.

Arsham doesn’t deliver a pessimistic message: he offers instead a poetry of impermanence, a quiet celebration of the transitory nature of all things.

The Legacy of the Eroded DeLorean

With Eroded DeLorean, Daniel Arsham did more than create a sculpture — he crafted a visual meditation on our time, a distorted yet truthful mirror of our longing for permanence in the face of inevitable disappearance. This work also paved the way for a whole generation of artists exploring similar themes: contemporary ruins, technological artifacts, and the aesthetic of the Anthropocene.

Ten years later, the message of Eroded DeLorean may resonate even more powerfully. At a time when our world is grappling with ecological, social, and technological crises — when the future of humanity is increasingly uncertain — this fossilized DeLorean stands not only as an homage to the past, but also as a cautionary emblem of a troubled future.

By petrifying a symbol of speed, travel, and optimism into a frozen, mineralized wreck, Daniel Arsham subtly reminds us that time is the ultimate sculptor.

The Eroded DeLorean sculpture is currently on display at the MOCO Museum in London.

In a world obsessed with novelty, Arsham elevates erosion to an art form, and forgetfulness to a monument.

In recent years, the artist has collaborated with several prestigious brands — notably with jeweler Tiffany, creating eroded jewelry packaging, and with watchmaker Hublot, designing a pocket watch shaped like a water droplet.