303 Gallery is pleased to present a group exhibition curated by artist and writer, Dan Graham. The show will feature the works of Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Wineke Gartz, Paul Sietsema, and Graham himself. Each included artist will focus on the nature of space, the material of representation, and how their confluences define perceptions and memory. The exhibition uses the gallery as a forum to show some of Graham’s favorite artists less known to New Yorkers for an inter-generational communication – a celebration of Dan Graham’s reciprocal influence over his four decades of art-making.
Konrad Dedobbeleer starts with functional industrial objects as his raw materials, contorting and recombining their shapes and surfaces to reveal unexpected alliances between the figurative cracks. An exact replica of a standard plastic cup is cast in nickel, a double-sided poster is suspended from the wall. The arcane and unexpected new worlds created by his interventions and forms is offset by the robbery of any functional use the original components might have had. Similarly dissociative, Wineke Gartz's video and film installations give a sense of place both non-specific and intensely phenomenal, expounding memory and knowledge with layered perspectives, projections, text, sound, and collage elements. Herworks are always site- specific, usually conceptualized offsite, and charged by the compositional process of placing each element in relation to its architectural surroundings. Here, she will show an installation consisting of drawings, photos and collages related to her environmental works; while Paul Sietsema jumps between media (often from within the same piece), exploring how imagery and material alter our understanding of culture. Dan Graham himself will contribute “Death By Chocolate,” a video shot over 9 years in the West Edmonton Shopping Mall. The video is an American’s celebration of Canadian shopping mall culture and social space. The video relates to a photo-essay Graham co-wrote in 1988 for Artforum corporate atriums in New York dealing with the 80s development of suburbia inside an urban corporate context. The constantly shifting modes of representation from within and without the viewer’s own consciousness is the hinge on which each artist’s pieces are leveled. In essence, a perpetually mutating freedom of cognizance is the only determinate ability useful in parsing the density of stimuli that surround us at every moment.
Dan Graham began his art career began in 1964 when he moved to New York and opened the John Daniels Gallery. His artistic fields consist of film, video, performance, photography, architectural models, and glass and mirror structure. Graham especially focuses on the relationship between his artwork and the viewer in his pieces. Graham Graham was known in1980s for his mirrored glass, quasi-architecture Pavilions. A retrospective of his work organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles will open February 15 – May 25, 2009 and will travel to the Whitney June 25, 2009. 303 Gallery would like to thank Marian Goodman Gallery New York and Paris for their support of this project.