ART CITIES: Los Angeles Dan Graham

A conceptual artist, architect, photographer, performer, video artist, and critic, Dan Graham began in the 1960s to reflect on the artistic system, focusing particularly on the mechanism of perception offered by works in different contexts. Since the early 1970s the ideology that underpins social phenomena such as rock music and architecture has been at the center of his work.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Regen Projects Archive

Dan Graham presents his solo exhibition “New Works By A Small-Town Boy” at Regen Projects in Los Angeles. On presentation is a selection of photographs relating to his seminal magazine artwork, “Homes for America” (2016) that were taken by Graham during a 2006 visit to his native suburban New Jersey, feature images of diverse architectural styles punctuated with lawns, topiaries, and shrubs. Displayed in a sequenced formation on the gallery walls, each image highlights Graham’s interest in serial structures, topology, and systems of information as evident in the peculiar color ranges, materials, and repetitive geometries of the suburban American landscape. A series of architectural models and video works provide further context for his ongoing exploration of the built world. Since 1965 Graham has shot photographs of typical one-family homes in ordinary American suburbs. These photographs were premiered in 1966 as a slide show in the exhibition “Projected Art” at Finch College Museum of Art, New York. That same year Graham designed his photo-text article “Homes for America” which addressed the issue of such row houses as a new form of urban living. In this work, designed as a magazine article, Graham examined the potential variations in style and color of serial housing. Originally the work was to be published in a major magazine like Esquire. At the end of 1966, a mutilated version was published in Arts Magazine. The accompanying text was given priority and most of the photographs cut. In the sixties Graham saw the medium of the magazine as an appropriate forum for the presentation of his works, which were situated outside the established art institutions. In his photographs, Graham intentionally ignores certain techniques and uses standard, cheap color prints, like a “photo journalist”.

Info: Regen Projects, 6750 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, Duration: 7/7-18/8/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.regenprojects.com