Dan Graham’s work questioned the relationship between architecture and its psychological effects on the spectator. His inquiries remain as poignant today as they did in the 1970’s when Graham first explored issues such as ‘the performative’, exhibitionism, reflection, mirroring and the mundane. Lisson Gallery is pleased to present footage of three seminal performances by Graham: _Past / Future / Split Attention _(1972), Performer / Audience / Mirror (1975), and _Lax / Relax _(1969-1995, footage of performance in 1995). Dan Graham did not view footage of his performances as strictly documentation, but rather as extensions of the performances themselves.

In Past / Future / Split Attention, Graham focuses on the assumption of time in the perception of oneself and others. Performed at Lisson Gallery in London, Graham placed two people in the same space, representing the present. The first person begins by predicting the future behaviour of their counterpart, and the second recounts the past of the first from memory. Graham writes: ‘For one to see the other in terms of the present (attention), there is a mirror reflection or closed figure-eight feedback/feedahead loop of past/future. One person’s behaviour reciprocally reflects/depends upon the other’s, so that each one’s information is seen as a reflection of the effect that their own just-past behaviour has had in reversed tense, as perceived from the other’s view of himself.’

Also performed at Lisson Gallery, Lax / Relax studies the appeal of a modified states of consciousness. Graham presents himself to the audience with a tape recorder and a microphone. A pre-recorded female voice softly announces ‘lax’ and Graham responds with ‘relax’, generating an auditory sensation that mirrors the inhale-exhale practice used in yoga. Inspired by Steve Reich’s phasing technique, Graham creates a minimalist, trance-like rhythm.

The presentation concludes with Dan Graham’s critical Performer Audience Mirror. Introducing audience participation for the first time in his practice, Graham situates himself between a large mirror and the crowd. The audience views themselves as the subject of their gaze usually reserved for artworks themselves. Filmed in his San Francisco studio, Graham first faces the audience and embarks on a stream-of-conscious monologue describing both the audience and himself. He then turns to the mirror and describes the reflected gathering. Graham explained, ‘first, a person in the audience sees himself ‘objectively’ (‘subjectively’) perceived by himself, next he hears himself described ‘objectively’ (‘subjectively’) in terms of the performer’s perception.’

A new essay by Specific Object President David Platzker accompanies the exhibition. Before founding Specific Object, Platzker was the Curator of Drawings and Prints at MoMA, New York from 2013-2018, and Executive Director of Printed Matter from 1998 to 2004. Platzker has curated presentations of John Baldessari, Hanne Darboven, Marcel Duchamp, Guerrilla Girls, Jenny Holzer, Yoko Ono, Raymond Pettibon, Ed Ruscha, and Claes Oldenburg, as well as There Will Never Be Silence: Scoring John Cage’s 4’33” in collaboration with Jon Hendricks at MoMA in 2013.