Dan Graham
Video/Architecture/Performance

Dan Graham conceived a major work for the Generali Foundation, which was produced for this exhibition. This installation has meanwhile become a central work in the collection and has been shown at further exhibitions such as Documenta X. "New Space for Showing Videos" is based on a previous work from the mid-eighties with indoor and outdoor identities ("Three linked Cubes/Interior Design for Space Showing Videos"). This work, a functional sculpture/pavilion, has a dual identity.

Placed outside, it is an opened pavilion illuminated by the sun; placed indoors, it is transformed into Interior Design for Space Showing Videos. Here, various video monitors and speakers are placed in such a way to allow three separate programs for audiences subdivided into six groups. The effects of the changing illumination from the video images reflected on the glass panels create the mirror "ghosts" of audience members seen in other enclosed bays on the divider. The work is both a functional exhibition design and an optical artwork, displaying both the video images and the spectators' reactions to the video-viewing process in the social space of the video exhibition situation (Dan Graham speaking about "Three Linked Cubes/Interior Design for Space Showing Videos").

"New Design for Showing Videos" uses punched aluminum (two aluminum sheets with small holes). The small holes refer to the small pixels on the video image. They are semi-transparent when seen from a short distance and completely transparent when the viewer’s eye is pressed directly to an opening. This relates to the transparency and shifting semi-reflection/transparency of the two-way mirror panels, a shift caused by changes in the projected video images. The spectators’ images of themselves and others observing the videos and each other and their own gazes and "other spectators’" gazes are the content of the intersubjective philosophical aspect of the structure.

"New Design for Showing Videos" belongs to a series of open-sided double triangular pavilions. None of these pavilions has been completed to date. Here the artist was working for the first time with punched aluminum along with glass (transparent glass, 2-way mirror). The program features Dan Graham's most important videos which are shown alternately, on even and uneven dates.

The exhibition was the first major presentation of Dan Graham in Austria with video installations, works on architecture and models of projects in public space.

Opposing Mirror and Monitors on Time Delay" (1974) was shown for the first time in Europe. From the "Time-Delay" series, "Yesterday/Today" (1975) was also installed. Furthermore, the video installation "Two Viewing Rooms" (1975) was shown. From the Architecture group, "Revolving Doors for Loie Fuller" (1987) and "Triangle with Circular Inserts" (1991) were shown.

The following models were in the exhibition: "Alteration to a Suburban House" (1978), "2-Way Mirror and Hedge Maze" (1989), "Childrens Pavilions" (shared with Jeff Wall, 1989), "Museum for Gordon Matta-Clark" (shared with Marie Paul McDonald, 1984), and "Skateboard Pavilion" (1989) and "Star of David" (1989), the latter two from our own collection.

Of Dan Graham's Conceptual Works, a selection was accessible in documented form. On the opening night, Dan Graham performed "Performer/ Audience/Mirror" (first shown in 1977). In this performance he stood as a performer facing an audience, behind him was a mirror in which both were reflected. In four stages, Dan Graham described for five minutes at a time, without interruption, what he observed in the movements and postures of the audience or himself, and from this he deduced psychological states. He first turned directly to the audience and later to the mirror, and the audience saw what was described reflected in each case. The result was a multifaceted interaction between the describer and the observer, the described and the behavior of the observed.

Dan Graham (1942 Urbana, USA), as the director of a gallery in New York, organized the first exhibitions of today's most important Minimal Art artists in the early 1960s. He also appeared as an author of texts on art, architecture and rock. After the gallery closed, he began working as an artist himself. Dan Graham participated in almost all important major exhibitions since the 1970s and is one of the most influential artists of his generation. He passed away in 2022 in New York.