Remembering Dan Graham

Dan Graham, one of America’s great conceptual artists, died on 17 February 2022. Born in 1942 and based in New York since the 1960s, he initially worked as a gallery owner, representing artists such as Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin among other conceptualists and minimalists. He began producing his own work in the mid-1960s. Not only his sculptural works, but also his performances, photographic and video works and his reflections on art theory made Graham one of the most influential artists of his generation on the international scene. With several video works and a large architectural sculpture, Dan Graham is also represented in the Museion collection. The “Sonic Youth Pavilion” (2008) is a 2-metre-high, 10-metre-long and almost 8-metre-wide structure made of steel, glass and mirrors that oscillates between (autonomous) sculpture and (utilisable) architecture. It was created by Dan Graham especially for the Museion’s “Sonic Youth” exhibition, in which video and sound works were presented. The structure was used again two years ago as part of the exhibition “Intermedia. Archivio di Nuova Scrittura”. The reflective effects of the works of this type have the effect that the visitor perceives his surroundings and himself at the same time in an unsettling double perception. Dan Graham, who also came to Bolzano in 2008 for a much-acclaimed lecture organised by Museion, saw his glass and steel sculptures as geometric forms that are activated by the presence of visitors in a sophisticated game of inclusion and exclusion.