Dan Graham / Birgit Pelzer, Mark Francis, Beatriz Colomina.

Summary: 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. From 1965-69 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. In 1966-67 he also made a series of photographs showing details of suburban housing projects, new shopping precincts, truck depots and roadside diners, titled Homes for America. Alongside the photos Graham\'s texts deconstruct social architectural spaces in ways which were far ahead of their time. From 1969-78 Graham worked primarily with performance, film and video, focusing, for example, on the synchronization of speech and breathing patterns between the artist and his audience. 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). All of Graham\'s projects are democratically rooted in everyday urban life and activity, particularly children\'s play. His work is thus as valuable to architects and town planners as to the art community.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 158-159).

Interview - London-based curator Mark Francis discusses with the artist how his consistently public participation-based work has evolved, from conceptual texts about popular culture inserted in mass-market magazines in the 1960s, through performances and pioneering video installations in the early 1970s, to his pavilions and environments of the 1980s-90s * Survey - Brussels-based critic Birgit Pelzer draws on her extensive knowledge of Graham\'s work and writings, both published and unpublished, to explore the issues of public and private space. * Focus - New York-based architectural theorist Beatriz Columina focuses on Graham\'s speculative project, Alterations to a Suburban Homes (1978). * Artist\'s Choice - The artist has chosen an extract from the science fiction novel Ubik by Philip K. Dick, whose writings were a formative influence in the 1960s. * Artist\'s Writings - Dan Graham\'s writings, many of which are regarded as seminal, range from conceptual texts such as Homes for America (1966-67) to descriptions of his performances, videos and architectural projects, to writings on fellow artists such as Gordon Matta-Clark, to writings on popular music and culture, from Dean Martin and the Kinks to the punk generation * Chronology and Bibliography.

This work consists of an interview with Dan Graham, in which he discusses how his participation-based work has evolved, a survey of his work & writings, his choice & discussion of an excerpt from a novel, & a selection of his writings & videos.