Dan Graham

Dividing Wall

Construable as a displacement of the bar’s facade out onto the forecourt or as a prism in which the surroundings are mirrored and fragmented, a wall of glass and steel winds its way through Karriere Bar’s outside tables’ area. Dividing walls and room dividers are common in the public realm and in restaurants, but Dan Graham’s Dividing Wall stands out from most. Instead of sound-absorbent and non-transparent materials, Graham’s wall is constructed of reflecting, semi-transparent and perforated steel and glass. This means that you can listen through some panels and see through others, sometimes as though seeing through a window and at others as though through a peephole. But you can never escape the sight of your own reflection while listening, seeing or spying. Graham uses the dividing wall as a medium for, rather than as a barrier to, communication. His use of dividing walls dates back to his video works from the early 1970s, focused around the relationship between audience and performer. An example is Two Consciousness Projections (1972) where, in front of a live audience, a man films a woman who sees what he is filming in real time on a monitor, whereupon they take turns to report to each other and the audience on what they see. Later Graham began to use mirrors in a similar way to create quirky spaces that set awry the boundaries we normally navigate by. The reflections and various forms of transparency mediated by the panels fronting Karriere Bar segregate space and alter distances. Moreover, the configuration of panels echoes the roof profile on the opposite side of the road, providing a clear-cut, crisp reflection amid all the kaleidoscopic, labyrinthine reflections you get caught in down among the tables. The most important boundaries disrupted by the wall remain those that Graham’s work always throws into disarray – those between reality and reflections and between the one who sees and the one who is seen. Graham is a theoretically sophisticated artist, but although his works are informed by rather abstruse reflections, they always result in a concrete experience, an exploration of alternative modes of being in space, time and social context. It is this feature that has led to his work being seen as paradigmatic for a generation of younger artists, among them Olafur Eliasson and Jeppe Hein. Precisely because the actual experience and the social context are so important, some of Graham’ s most compelling works are those sited in practical settings. He has designed, for instance, a multimedia space for a preschool, a roof for a skateboard ramp, a mirror-glazed swimming pool with built-in aquarium and bar, a reflective cinema and now, joining the tally, a dividing wall in an outdoor tables’ area in Vesterbro. (NH)

Dan Graham, born 1942, USA

• artwork
• Interview with Dan Graham