Dan Graham (1942)
United States

"Born in 1942 in Urbana (ILLINOIS, United States)
died in 2022 in New York (New York State, UNITED STATES)

Artist, theoretician, photographer, videographer and even architect, Dan Graham is among the most important figures in post-1965 art, a pivotal period which marks the beginnings of neo-avant-gardes such as minimal art and art conceptual. Dan Graham's work has been exhibited in the most prestigious international institutions, such as the Center Pompidou (Paris), the Tate Modern (London), the MoMA (New York), as well as during documenta 7 in Cassel in 1982.

If the first works of Dan Graham are fully in line with this double filiation, minimal, and conceptual, the developments that they subsequently take clearly depart from it, both formally and ideologically, being more interested in the place of art in public space and the socio-political function it can occupy there. After a brief experience as a gallery owner at the Green Gallery in New York in 1964, the artist began to create works of a conceptual nature, using books and print as important methods of visibility of art. Thus, his first works such as Scheme (1965) and Schema (1966) were published in various periodicals and appear as isolated pages whose linguistic statement is none other than the description of its physical properties (quality of the paper, size of the characters, number of words, etc.). This “informational” conception of art is also found in his most famous project entitled Homes for America (1966-1989), where the artist conducts a sort of reporting between journalism and sociological study (with photographs and descriptive text) on the post-war pavilions built in series in the United States.
His interest in the vernacular as well as popular culture led Dan Graham to devote a text, read at conferences, then a video, to rock music. Rock My Religion (1979-1983), a now iconic work, considers rock as a new religion and the stage performances of its main protagonists (Patti Smith, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Rolling Stones, etc.) as true “performances”. An important part of his work is also based on the creation of installations or devices playing on the spectator's own experience of the body in space. In Public Space/Two Audiences (1976), for example, the spectator becomes aware of his body and his status as a subject perceiving his own image or that of other visitors, through a skillful play of glass, mirrors and television screens.
From the end of the 1970s, Dan Graham focused his work around the design of architectural models (often called “pavilions”) producing a sensory experience depending on the light conditions (transparency, mirror effects). Hybrid works where architecture, design and sculpture intersect, these metal and glass structures (realized or not, remaining only models) are often integrated into public spaces (including one in Paris, dating from 2006) in order to disrupt the perception that passers-by have of it. Among the most famous, we can cite his Two Adjacent Pavilions (1979) as well as the Children’s Pavilion (1986–89) co-directed with the Canadian artist Jeff Wall."

(Source, website, Contemporary Art Institute of Villeurbanne)

Work :

• Audience/Performer/Mirror (1977)