Dan Graham

Artist

Dan Graham is one of the most influential of the American Conceptual artists who first emerged in the mid 1960s as part of a generation that included the Minimalists Carl Andre, Dan Flavin and Sol LeWitt, with whom he was closely associated during that period. While their work offered a critique of the gallery's white club and of the value of material, Graham began to question the art system itself and decided to operate outside it.

At this time he produced a series of texts such as 'Schema' (1966) which he inserted into mass-market magazines. The periodical nature of magazine production and consumption was clearly related to the experience of time and change - a theme central to Graham's work ever since .

From 1974, with the installation/performance 'Present Continuous Past(s)', Graham began to use two-way mirror walls in relation to real reflections and time-delayed video projections. These works evolved into the socially-based architectural projects such as open air pavilions, for which Graham is most famous internationally. These have included a 'Skateboard Pavilion' in Stuttgart in 1989 and in the same year 'The Children's Pavilion' (with Jeff Wall) and the 'Star of David Pavilion' (Vienna, 1991-96).

Graham writes for newspapers and magazines as an art critic, and has contributed to a number of books, including Two Way mirror Power: Selected Writings by Dan Graham on His Art (2000).