Art Metropole

04 Oct. 2009

Dan Graham Pavilions: A Guide By Josh Thorpe

Toronto Book Launch with Dan Graham at Art Metropole

Artists

Josh Thorpe and Dan Graham

Public Lecture by Dan Graham at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto

Dan Graham Pavilions: A Guide, Art Metropole, (Toronto), 2009, 12.7 × 10.2 cm, 80 pp. full colour, perfect bound, softcover

Since the ’60s, Dan Graham has been making radical work in print, video, performance, and architectural installation. In the late ’70s he began designing his pavilions, structures in steel and semi-reflective glass that comment on local architecture and offer rich social moments for people to reflect on the world around them.

*Dan Graham Pavilions:* A Guide is the first publication to provide comprehensive and direct information on the remote international sites where his public works may be discovered and enjoyed.

Graham’s pavilions are parodies of corporate architecture, moments of psychedelic experience in the urban landscape, shelters for the weather-beaten pedestrian, romantic rendezvous for lovers, photo-ops for tourists, and funhouses for kids. This guide provides photos, locations, and access information for public works across North and South America, Europe, and Asia. It is the product of a research collaboration between Toronto artist and author Josh Thorpe, Toronto artist-run centre Art Metropole, and Dan Graham himself.

Dan Graham was born 1942 in Urbana, Illinois (USA). He has been working internationally since the 1960s. A pioneer of early performance, video, conceptual, and post-minimal art, Graham is also a writer, critic, and curator. Graham’s body of work includes video installations, photos, text works, films, architectural models, and fully fledged architectural installations using steel and two-way mirror glass. His work is concerned with a social interaction between viewers and objects.

Josh Thorpe is an artist, musician, writer, and publisher living in Toronto. He has a Masters in Visual Studies from University of Toronto and he is currently employed by the Ontario College of Art and Design. Thorpe’s work has been seen and heard in Berlin, Paris, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Joliette, Quebec.

Josh Thorpe is an artist, writer, and musician living in Toronto. He has a Master’s in Visual Studies from University of Toronto and he works at ERA Architects and Cove & Ovolo. His work has been shown in Canada, the US, and Europe. In 2009 Art Metropole published Thorpe’s first book, Dan Graham Pavilions: A Guide.

Installation, Performance, and Conceptual artist Dan Graham (American, b.1942) is best known for his pioneering advances in Video Art as well as his highly-conceptual installations, which facilitate specific interactions between viewers. Born in Urbana, Illinois, he moved to New Jersey as a young man and in 1962 opened the John Daniels Gallery in New York, his first official foray into the art world. There he showed the work of Conceptual and Minimalist artists, such as Sol LeWitt (American, 1928–2007) and Donald Judd (American, 1928–1994), and began creating works himself during this time, influenced by similar reductive aesthetics. Beginning in the late 1960s, he worked with photography, documenting houses in both urban and suburban areas, which he later published in a magazine format, accompanied by texts in his Homes for America series. In the 1970s, he was a leading proponent of Performance and Video Art, before turning to an installation format to create architectural sites provoking interactions between viewers and public spaces. He often also used video, mirrors, and other materials in innovative ways to explore the relationship formed between the audience and the artwork. Retrospectives of his work have been held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles,the Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland, the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in Germany, the Museu Serralves in Portugal, and the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford. He has also exhibited his work in several Documenta exhibitions in Kassel. In addition to his work as an artist, Graham is also an acclaimed cultural critic and theorist, and has published several significant books over the past three decades. He currently lives and works in New York City.

Images

1: Guests standing and circulating.
2: Dan Graham signs a book surrounded by guests.
3: Josh Thorpe, editor of Dan Graham Pavilions, in conversation.
4: Dan Graham in coversation.
5: Dan Graham (back to camera), Andy Fabo, Josh Thorpe, Stephen Andrews and others.
6: Dan Graham in an introspective moment.

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