DAN GRAHAM
September 12 - October 1, 2011
exhibition at - Inonu Caddesi, No 9A, Taksim - Gumussuyu p: 0541 468 0214
opening hours - 11am - 6pm, Tue - Sat
Dan Graham in conversation with Corey McCorkle
Thursday, September 15th, 5pm
conversation at - Cezayir, Hayriye Cad. 12, Galatasaray, Beyoğlu
Admission: FREE
in conjunction with Sabanci University
Press Release
Protocinema is pleased to open with an exhibition of works by Dan Graham. Among the primary concerns in Graham's work are his interest in language, music, architecture and the ways in which spaces define, and are defined by, social interaction. As Protocinema is an experiment in making moving exhibitions, in New York and Istanbul, the confluent shifts of meaning, location, space and audience have shared importance. The opportunity for Graham to exhibit his work in a storefront near Taksim Square, the center of Istanbul, expands his dialogue around responses to the public spaces of corporate capitalism.
Central to Graham's practice are relationships between his work and its audience. The works on view at Protocinema focus on fabricated public spaces. "Death by Chocolate", 1986-2005, was filmed entirely in a shopping mall in West Edmonton, Canada, at the height of mall-mania in the Americas. It explores the interior of the mall and the wide variety of seemingly disparate activities contained within, including a caged man wrestling a tiger. Another work, "Pavilion, Semi-Circular 2-way Mirror", 2006, is a model or sculpture of a potential future pavilion. This work is an extension of his ongoing practice, started in 1978, of creating large scale public pavilions that merge sculpture and architecture. Constructed to give the viewer a disoriented, new experience of their surroundings, the pavilions vary in form and material, which can include glass, steel and/or two-way glass, mirror and aluminum, depending on their location. The architecture historian, Beatriz Colomina, writes - "Graham understands his pavilions to be in an explicit dialogue with the long history of architectural pavilions. He often refers to the primitive hut of Marc-Antoine Laugier's mid-eighteenth-century essay on architecture, nineteenth-century park gazebos, national pavilions for the exhibition of commodities in international fairs, twentieth-century temporary pavilions built by modern architects for expositions and international fairs, and even bus stops and telephone booths."
Also on view are three photographs; "Untitled (Union City, NJ)", "Untitled (Highway front window facade, Dunkin' Donuts, Union City, NJ)" and "Untitled (Parking lot display of swimming pool products, highway store, NJ)", all taken in 2006. These images revisit a site and subject matter familiar to Graham, having first been seen in his early photographic project, "Homes for America" (1965). These photographs examine lesser-known topography in small towns along the seashore and explore suburbia and other fabricated public spaces.
Dan Graham was born in 1942, Urbana, Illinois, he lives and works in New York. His exhibition "Dan Graham: Beyond," was on view at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California (2009); The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2009); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota(2010). Graham has had retrospective exhibitions at The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago (1981); Kunsthalle Berne (1983); the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth (1985), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (1993); and Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1997). He has participated in Documenta V (1972), VI (1977), VII (1982), IX (1992), and X (1997). In 2001,"Dan Graham, Works 1965-2000," opened at the Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal, and traveled to the ARC/Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in Paris; the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo; and the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf.
CONVERSATION - Dan Graham in conversation with Corey McCorkle. Thursday, Sept 15, 5pm at Cezayir, Hayirye Cad. 12, Galatasaray, Beyoğlu, in collaboration with Sabanci University.
Special Thanks to - Sabanci University, Istanbul; Selim Birsel; Lisson Gallery , London; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York; Regen Projects, Los Angeles; Haro and Bilge Cumbusyan, Sylvia Kouvali, Maurizio Bortolotti, November Paynter, Lisa Spellman, Onur Çetinoğlu, Jason Duval, Lara Fresko and Can Altay.
WITH SUPPORT FROM
