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MEYER*KAINER
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Vienna, Austria
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Dan Graham

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(1942 - 2022), USA

Dan Graham was an artist, writer, musician and intellectual whose practice over 50 years combined the aesthetics and concerns of Minimalism with the fundamental inquiries of Conceptualism.

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Throughout a shape-shifting and wide-ranging practice, Graham often utilised the human body to explore the role of the spectator. Although curators and critics have found Graham's oeuvre difficult to summarise—due in no small part to the artist's own elusiveness about his art—Graham's practice has long been an important reference point for later generations, if not a cornerstone of Conceptual art.

Graham grew up in Winfield and Westfield, New Jersey, and in 1963 moved to New York City, where he would later publish a series of texts on art, architecture, music and television.

In 1964, at the age of 22, he co-founded the John Daniels Gallery, which exhibited the work of Minimalists and Conceptual artists such as Donald Judd, Robert Smithson, Dan Flavin and Sol LeWitt, the latter of whom had his first solo show at the space before it closed. Following the closure, Graham continued to write music and art criticism while using magazines as outlets for early text pieces—a move seen as a rejection of the elitist limitations of the white cube.

Printed in a fashion periodical, Graham's 1965 work Figurative is a reproduction of a supermarket register receipt, while his most well-known early work, Homes for America (1966–7) is a photo-based essay published in Arts Magazine. Embracing the ephemerality of the periodical with a dry humour traceable throughout his practice, the work comprises a series of photographs of homogenous suburban houses, emphasising the similarities between the repetition of post-war residential architecture and the starkness of Minimalism as he saw it at the time.

Long-engaged with the Punk and Hardcore movements, in 1987, Graham designed the cover of Sonic Youth's album Sister, while his 55-minute 1982–4 quasi-documentary Rock My Religion draws parallels between rock-and-roll culture and religious ecstasy.

In 2004, Graham collaborated with the punk group Japanther and the artists Laurent P Berger, Rodney Graham, Bruce Odland and Tony Oursler on the rock opera Don't Trust Anyone Over Thirty, which featured puppets, live music, sound recordings and video projections. However, Graham is now most recognised for the combination of architecture and art in his 'pavilions'—although he has suggested he doesn't like the word, and prefers to refer to them as public sculptures.

Begun in the late 1970s, the semi-functional sculptures combine curving mirrored glass, steel, and sometimes hedges and grass to distort perception and refashion the stoicism of Minimalist forms. Incorporating elements of bus shelters and skyscrapers, the semi-reflective pavilions act as bisecting structures and interventions in urban spaces, engaging a range of perceptual experiences, as artist/curator Peter Scott has written, 'from detached voyeur to entranced narcissist'.

In 2009, Dan Graham: Beyond (25 February–25 May, The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles; 25 June–11 October, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York), the artist's first significant American retrospective, was exhibited, co-organised by The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Elliat Albrecht | Ocula | 2018

Recent Artworks

Round and Around by Dan Graham contemporary artwork sculpture, mixed media
Dan Graham Round and Around, 2019 Two-way mirror glass, aluminium, wood, acrylic, corian
MEYER*KAINER Contact Gallery
Going Nowhere by Dan Graham contemporary artwork painting, sculpture
Dan Graham Going Nowhere, 2019 Two-way mirror glass, aluminium, wood, acrylic, corian
MEYER*KAINER Contact Gallery
Little Perforated Cylinder inside Big Two-Way Mirror Cylinder by Dan Graham contemporary artwork sculpture
Dan Graham Little Perforated Cylinder inside Big Two-Way Mirror Cylinder, 2019 Two-way mirror glass, stainless steel, punched stainless steel sheets
230 x 360 x 360 cm
MEYER*KAINER Contact Gallery

Dan Graham In Ocula Magazine

John Yau Connects Three Asian American Modernists Ocula Conversation John Yau Connects Three Asian American Modernists By Stephanie Bailey, New York

John Yau describes the lives and works of three overlooked figures of modernism: Leo Amino, Minoru Niizuma, and John Pai.

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Dan Graham Ocula Conversation Dan Graham By John Slyce, London

I actually love museums. In fact, I've learned a lot from museums.

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Dan Graham In Related Press

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Preview Art Basel 2019 Related Press Preview Art Basel 2019 7 June 2019, ARTnews

Art Basel 2019 opens to the public on Thursday, June 13, with two preview days, on June 11 and 12. Some 290 galleries from 34 countries will show work at the Swiss fair, which runs through June 16.

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'We Had to Create Something New': Klaus Biesenbach on Inventing the Berlin Biennale Related Press 'We Had to Create Something New': Klaus Biesenbach on Inventing the Berlin Biennale 7 June 2018, ARTnews

Many of the art spaces in early '90s Berlin were located in vacant, abandoned, often ruined buildings that artists had taken over. Artists were running studio collectives and co-ops, outfitting surpri

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US artist Dan Graham brings 'Greatest Hits' to China Related Press US artist Dan Graham brings 'Greatest Hits' to China 15 November 2017, Global Times

A total of more than 20 artworks, from videos to installation works, on display at Beijing's Red Brick Art Museum will give Chinese visitors a chance to look back at US artist Dan Graham's five-decade

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Critic’s Guide: Beijing Related Press Critic’s Guide: Beijing 14 November 2017, Frieze

From explorations into the varied meanings of 'Asia' to an uncomfortably personal solo show, highlights of the best shows across the city Discordant Harmony : Observations of Artistic Practices in

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Related Press Read More (8) In Related Press
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