Dan Graham: Beyond
October 31, 2009 - January 24, 2010
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
One of contemporary art's most innovative figures, Dan Graham has been at the forefront of numerous artistic developments since the 1960s, from the rise of conceptualism and minimalism to video and performance to explorations of architecture and the culture of rock and roll. His rejection of the high-seriousness of modern art emerged at the same moment as Pop art, and the fluid, democratic quality of his work continues to exert a powerful influence on younger generations.
This ground-breaking retrospective, the first in the U.S., showcases Graham’s expansive body of work—including his innovations with video and performance, glass-and-mirror pavilions that play off architecture and public spaces, and magazine projects, as well as media installations, prints, drawings, photographs, and writing. In tracing the evolution of Graham’s work across its major stages, the exhibition highlights persistent underlying motifs and concerns—most notably, the changing relationship of individual to society, as filtered through American mass media and architecture.
Dan Graham: Beyond comes to the Walker following presentations at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (February 15 - May 25, 2009) and New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art (June 25 - October 11, 2009). A fully illustrated scholarly catalogue with major essays by exhibition co-curators Chrissie Iles (Whitney) and Bennett Simpson (MOCA), and many others, is available in the Walker Shop.
Dan Graham: Beyond is organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Dan Graham: Beyond is presented by The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. The exhibition is made possible through endowment support from the Sydney Irmas Exhibition Endowment. Major support is provided by The Suzanne M. Nora Johnson and David G. Johnson Foundation. Generous additional support is provided by Hauser & Wirth Zürich London; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris; The MOCA Contemporaries; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts; Mary and Robert Looker; the Pasadena Art Alliance; Betye Monell Burton; Peter Gelles and Eve Steele Gelles; John Morace and Tom Kennedy; Eileen and Michael Cohen; Bagley and Virginia Wright; and Marieluise Hessel.
Dan Graham, New Space for Showing Videos, 1995
two-way tempered mirror glass, clear tempered glass, mahogany
-
VISUAL ARTS | Beholding the eye of Dan Graham at the Walker
By Jay Gabler,
October 31, 2009 / TC Daily Planet
... The 67-year-old Graham has an erudite yet impish quality; he seems to be thinking about everything at once, and finding most of it tremendously amusing. As we walked through the exhibit, Simpson and Iles took turns explaining Graham's historical significance and the interrelations among his works, but kept finding themselves enthusiastically interrupted by the artist, who clarified a point here, shared a story there, and kept emphasizing that whatever place he's earned in the international contemporary art world (and he's surely earned a place; Beyond is the cover story of the current Artforum), most of his work was meant to be funny.
... If one key to understanding Graham's work came from the conspicuous joy and amusement with which he watched visitors interact with his work—after the group split into the two rooms of his mirror piece Public Space/Two Audiences, he urged us to switch sides so everyone could get the whole experience—another came from his statement that he and his peers in the heady New York art world of the 60s "wanted to destroy value." In other words, they wanted to place the focus on the function and concept of a piece rather than fetishizing the piece as a physical object. Performance was obviously one means to this end, the mass-produced magazine pieces ("the editor of Artforum would print whatever I sent her") were another, and his mirrored pavilions are yet another: you're not looking at "a Graham," you're looking at yourself.
That said, Graham's pavilions are physical objects, and they now fetch princely sums—plus requiring the additional cost of transportation and assembly. Ralph Burnet, real estate mogul and owner of the Chambers Hotel, owns one. "I paid Dan Graham a frickin' fortune for a piece installed in my house," he told me. "Then I had to hire a glass company, have the whole thing installed...it was very tedious." But what could he do? He had to have one. "Dan Grahams," he said, "are Dan Grahams."
-
Walker Art Center Opens Major Dan Graham Retrospective
November 1, 2009 / artdaily.org
... At the same time, Graham was closely involved with underground music, writing a series of free-ranging, yet historically rigorous speculations on bands like the Kinks, the Fall, and the Sex Pistols. The attempt by youth culture to shake off social control—to get free from the ideological norms of postwar life—rhymed easily with the artist’s own work in conceptual and media art. Rock My Religion (1982–1984) is an hour-long “video-essay” in which Graham traced a continuum between the Shakers, the early-American religious sect that sought spiritual transcendence through collective dance and song, and hardcore punk music. In the latter’s cathartic noise and social rites, Graham located an ongoing, if latent, spirit of separatism that has demarcated American culture from its origins. With its bracing footage of Patti Smith, Sonic Youth, and Black Flag mingled with historical images of a rapt Ann Lee, founder of the Shaker religion, the work is a classic of underground video and one of the most penetrating commentaries on American youth culture ever made. ...
October 31, 2009 - January 24, 2010
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
One of contemporary art's most innovative figures, Dan Graham has been at the forefront of numerous artistic developments since the 1960s, from the rise of conceptualism and minimalism to video and performance to explorations of architecture and the culture of rock and roll. His rejection of the high-seriousness of modern art emerged at the same moment as Pop art, and the fluid, democratic quality of his work continues to exert a powerful influence on younger generations.
This ground-breaking retrospective, the first in the U.S., showcases Graham’s expansive body of work—including his innovations with video and performance, glass-and-mirror pavilions that play off architecture and public spaces, and magazine projects, as well as media installations, prints, drawings, photographs, and writing. In tracing the evolution of Graham’s work across its major stages, the exhibition highlights persistent underlying motifs and concerns—most notably, the changing relationship of individual to society, as filtered through American mass media and architecture.
Dan Graham: Beyond comes to the Walker following presentations at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (February 15 - May 25, 2009) and New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art (June 25 - October 11, 2009). A fully illustrated scholarly catalogue with major essays by exhibition co-curators Chrissie Iles (Whitney) and Bennett Simpson (MOCA), and many others, is available in the Walker Shop.
Dan Graham: Beyond is organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Dan Graham: Beyond is presented by The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. The exhibition is made possible through endowment support from the Sydney Irmas Exhibition Endowment. Major support is provided by The Suzanne M. Nora Johnson and David G. Johnson Foundation. Generous additional support is provided by Hauser & Wirth Zürich London; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris; The MOCA Contemporaries; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts; Mary and Robert Looker; the Pasadena Art Alliance; Betye Monell Burton; Peter Gelles and Eve Steele Gelles; John Morace and Tom Kennedy; Eileen and Michael Cohen; Bagley and Virginia Wright; and Marieluise Hessel.
two-way tempered mirror glass, clear tempered glass, mahogany
-
VISUAL ARTS | Beholding the eye of Dan Graham at the Walker
By Jay Gabler,
October 31, 2009 / TC Daily Planet
... The 67-year-old Graham has an erudite yet impish quality; he seems to be thinking about everything at once, and finding most of it tremendously amusing. As we walked through the exhibit, Simpson and Iles took turns explaining Graham's historical significance and the interrelations among his works, but kept finding themselves enthusiastically interrupted by the artist, who clarified a point here, shared a story there, and kept emphasizing that whatever place he's earned in the international contemporary art world (and he's surely earned a place; Beyond is the cover story of the current Artforum), most of his work was meant to be funny.
... If one key to understanding Graham's work came from the conspicuous joy and amusement with which he watched visitors interact with his work—after the group split into the two rooms of his mirror piece Public Space/Two Audiences, he urged us to switch sides so everyone could get the whole experience—another came from his statement that he and his peers in the heady New York art world of the 60s "wanted to destroy value." In other words, they wanted to place the focus on the function and concept of a piece rather than fetishizing the piece as a physical object. Performance was obviously one means to this end, the mass-produced magazine pieces ("the editor of Artforum would print whatever I sent her") were another, and his mirrored pavilions are yet another: you're not looking at "a Graham," you're looking at yourself.
That said, Graham's pavilions are physical objects, and they now fetch princely sums—plus requiring the additional cost of transportation and assembly. Ralph Burnet, real estate mogul and owner of the Chambers Hotel, owns one. "I paid Dan Graham a frickin' fortune for a piece installed in my house," he told me. "Then I had to hire a glass company, have the whole thing installed...it was very tedious." But what could he do? He had to have one. "Dan Grahams," he said, "are Dan Grahams."
-
Walker Art Center Opens Major Dan Graham Retrospective
November 1, 2009 / artdaily.org
... At the same time, Graham was closely involved with underground music, writing a series of free-ranging, yet historically rigorous speculations on bands like the Kinks, the Fall, and the Sex Pistols. The attempt by youth culture to shake off social control—to get free from the ideological norms of postwar life—rhymed easily with the artist’s own work in conceptual and media art. Rock My Religion (1982–1984) is an hour-long “video-essay” in which Graham traced a continuum between the Shakers, the early-American religious sect that sought spiritual transcendence through collective dance and song, and hardcore punk music. In the latter’s cathartic noise and social rites, Graham located an ongoing, if latent, spirit of separatism that has demarcated American culture from its origins. With its bracing footage of Patti Smith, Sonic Youth, and Black Flag mingled with historical images of a rapt Ann Lee, founder of the Shaker religion, the work is a classic of underground video and one of the most penetrating commentaries on American youth culture ever made. ...
