DAN GRAHAM
FORUM AN DER MUSEUMSINSEL
FORUM AN DER MUSEUMSINSEL, BERLIN, GERMANY
FROM APRIL 2025
Dan Graham‘s multifaceted practice deliberately transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries, integrating text, photography, and three-dimensional form to intervene in and reinterpret the everyday environment.
His pavilions are hybrid structures that function both as utilitarian spaces and as sculptural objects. Since creating Two Adjacent Pavilions for Documenta 7 in 1982, pavilions have been a recurring motif in his work. They emerged from Graham‘s exploration of context and site-specificity: “The origin of my pavilions dates back to when I first saw Minimal art installed as outdoor public sculpture. It looked so out of place. I wondered how one could position a quasi-Minimalist object outdoors in a way that allowed people to enter it and experience it from both inside and outside.” His response emphasizes the dialectic between urban and natural spaces, between modernity and the arcadian. Drawing on a long tradition of outdoor structures—ranging from the rustic hut and 19th-century gazebos to the temporary constructions of de Stijl and Modernist architects—Graham nevertheless employs the materials of contemporary urban architecture: mirrored glass, perforated stainless steel, and aluminum.
His pavilions function not just as sculptural objects but as social spaces designed to facilitate encounters between people. Their sleek, alluring forms invite interaction and frame a range of shifting social dynamics. They expose both the viewer’s subjectivity and the perceptual process at play in engaging with the work. While their sculptural qualities take center stage in a gallery setting, in public spaces, they become relational objects—reflecting and connecting passersby, their surroundings, and ephemeral moments in time.
