Dan Graham

© Photo credit：Tony Metaxas

© Photo credit：Tony Metaxas

Curves for E.S. is part of a series of two-way mirror pavilions, which, according to the artist, "mimic the condition of architecture in the city. They simultaneously evoke the historical precedent of garden pavilion forms from the Renaissance and rococo moments in Western garden art to the Chinese garden pavilions, which used circular open portals and windows." Visitors have to experience both sides of this architecture through the variation of their reflective quality. E. S. are the initials of Eeno Sarinen, a Finnish American modernist architect and product designer, notably renowned for his use of arching structural curves, which compose Dan Graham's pavilion. Dan Graham's artwork is said to blur the line between sculpture and architecture. His pavilions are steel and glass sculptures, which create a different space by disorienting the viewer from his or her usual surroundings or knowledge of space. They are rigorous but uniquely beautiful and insistently public. The pavilions create a unique experience for the viewer because the glass wall of the structure reflects and distorts light. The artist uses architecture for its capacity to reveal the social subject in a collection of both social and psychological studies of himself and others. It alternately and simultaneously illustrates the perceived and the perceiver, the one who sees and the one who is seen, and mirrors everyday life of the city.

Dan Graham

Born in 1942 in Urbana, Illinois (USA).
Lives and works in New York (USA).

Dan Graham is one of the most influential figures in the field of contemporary art and is both a practitioner and an art critic and theorist. His artistic fields consist of film, video, performance, photography, architectural models, and glass and mirror structures. Graham particularly focuses on the relationship between his artwork and the viewer.

Recent Solo Shows:
2009: Dan Graham: Beyond, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California (USA); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (USA); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota (USA); Dan Graham, Portikus, Frankfurt/Main, Germany. 2007: Dan Graham's New Jersey, Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, Columbia University, New York.