Dan Graham
“Two Housing Projects, New York, NY”, 1966
carriage trade
94 Prince St. 2nd fl.
New York, NY
10012
http://www.carriagetrade.org/
Dan Graham has produced a photographic edition of “Two Housing Projects, New York, NY“, 1966 to benefit the new gallery carriage trade, an exhibition space opening in Soho in February 2008. Prints are available through: http://www.carriagetrade.org/Dan-Graham
or abandps@earthlink.net
As an early example of Dan Graham’s photographic work, “Two Housing Projects, New York, NY” could be seen as representative of what would become a long-term preoccupation with architecture and the city plan. The influence of minimal artists such as Donald Judd is readily apparent in the verticality of the image, as well as the “stacking” of the sets of balconies on both sides of the picture. Taken during the same period as the “Homes for America” photographs as well as text pieces such as “Schema”, both intended for magazine distribution, Graham’s initial interest in the medium of photography came partly out of a reluctance to accept the sequestering of art within the gallery system, whose “containers” had been highlighted by minimal art’s emphasis on the materiality of the art object.
As part of a larger discursive practice that stretches across writing, performance, video, models and pavilions, Graham’s photographs could be seen as visual “think pieces” within a medium that offers immediate responses to elements of the built environment that parallel his line of thought, and have also proven highly influential on younger generations of artists who have taken up the problem of art’s relationship to architecture.
Born 1942 in Urbana, Illinois (USA) Dan Graham lives and works in New York City. He has exhibited in numerous galleries and museum internationally and his writing has been widely published. A retrospective exhibition of his work will begin at MoCA in Los Angeles will travel to the Whitney Museum New York in the spring of 2009.
Through presenting primarily group exhibitions, carriage trade will function not as a means to promote the careers of individual artists, but to provide contexts for their work that reveal its relevance to larger social and political conditions prevalent today. A project of the artist / curator Peter Scott, whose exhibitions have attempted to highlight this relevance over the value of any given artist’s work within the hierarchy of the art market, the programming will intentionally combine well known with lesser known artists, and historical pieces (60′s, 70′s, 80′s) with very recent work. Originally influenced by the approach of magazines like The Baffler and Harper’s which combine fact based readings with editorial commentary, Scott’s curatorial approach often integrates relevant found material as a means to broaden the scope of an art exhibition by positioning the “evidence” of everyday experience in direct relation to an artist’s mediation of social conditions.
Some themes to be addressed in upcoming shows include issues of propaganda in mass media, the effect of neo-liberal policies on the built environment and social relations, as well as the concept of “mistaken identity” and likeness within the realm of portraiture. The location of Soho, a neighborhood that could be seen as a now historical model for the intense gentrification taking place in cities everywhere, provides an appropriate setting for addressing the cyclic nature of urban transformation, (Soho enjoyed a previous incarnation as a high-end shopping district in the mid -1800′s during America’s Gilded Age) due to seismic shifts in economic relations.
The first exhibition at carriage trade, “The Cult of Personality / Portraits and Mass Culture“, will open on February 28, 2008 and will feature work by Yasser Aggour, Jennifer Dalton, Vitaly Komar, Sherrie Levine, Paul McCarthy, Muntadas and Reese, Bill Owens, Julia Wachtel, and Karen Yama.
