DAN’S WORLD

January 26 - March 17 2018

Galleri Nicolai Wallner is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by Dan Graham entitled Dan’s World.

The show brings together three of Graham’s iconic pavilions in the gallery space. Industrial steel frames hold together expanses of two-way mirror that curve and join, bending and intersecting together to crate walls, spaces and passageways. Placed in tandem with each other, the depth of the pavilions’ abilities to transform the environments in which they are placed is inescapable.

Mirror is layered upon mirror, reflection upon reflection, continually multiplying and opening up new ways of looking at everything and everyone that finds itself within the surrounding space. This creates a constant dialogue as we are able to both see through and see ourselves within its surface. This act of looking allows the work to evolve as we move in and around it, changing with each new person, with each new setting.

Since the 1960s, Dan Graham has become a seminal figure within the world of contemporary art, influencing generations of artists. Exploring the dynamics that find themselves at the intersection of art, architecture and social space, his paired down aesthetic allows our attention to focus on the relationships that develop as we interact with his work.

In the context of this give and take created by Graham’s practice, Dan’s World immerses us quite literally within an environment in which we constantly have the opportunity to learn something new. We find ourselves within an imaginative state of mind, a fact echoed by Graham’s work titles which seem to have endless interpretations. Time/Space Warp (2015) playfully hints at monumental concepts and explanations for the ways in which we might be able to bring together understand our universe. Aries/Fun (2017) and Let’s Get To Know Each Other (2015) are more intimate, referencing astrology and a desire for us to be a little bit closer.

Regardless of how we might perceive these ideas, Graham reminds us that we are at the centre of all of them.

Dan Graham (b.1942, USA) has shown extensively around the world, with notable recent solo exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (New York), MAMO (Marseille), Red Brick Art Museum (Beijing), De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art (Tilburg), Turner Contemporary (London), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Hayward Gallery (London), and Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) among many others. Graham also has permanent public installations in various cities, including New York, London, Stockholm, Los Angeles, Basel, Brussels, Vienna, Cologne and Tokyo.

carrie emberlyn