"Dan Graham: New Classic Models", Cayón, 2019.
From the beginning of his career during the 60’s, Graham explored the perceptive structures with a corpus of works that involve the spectator transforming it into an essential element.
His video installations, the first ones from 1974, seek to generate a closed loop where the public feels part of the action that is being displayed on the screen.
Concerned about the mass culture, the mass media, and the malls, since 1975 he included in his work a fundamental material in his contemporary practice: the mirror-glass.
This material leads him to culminate a series, from 1978 onwards, of buildings – known as Pavilions – that hide a deep reflection on architecture, contemporary urbanism in the USA and landscape.
These installations, connected with the idea of the modern shopping center – “temple” of contemporary society-, and with the architecture of large corporations, become scenarios that encourage fun and entertainment due to its reflective surface and its labyrinthine configuration.
His practice, in all its diverse manifestations, is considered as a set of geometric forms inhabited and activated by the presence of the spectator, that generates a sense of restlessness through the continuous play between the perceptions of being inside or outside the space.
