Performance Café with Perforated Sides, 2010

Dan Graham - New York City, USA

Installation

In Performance Café with Perforated Sides (2010), Dan Graham creates a structure that is intended to function as a space for performance and encounter. The pavilion evokes connotations of performer and audience, even when it is encountered alone, as viewers see themselves reflected in its shimmering surface. Conceptually, Performance Café is a stage. Two walls of the pavilion are made with perforated stainless steel. The two alternate ends of the pavilion are made of semi-reflective two-way mirror glass. Both mirror and steel create optical effects, unique experiences for each viewer. The perforations in the steel create a moiré pattern, an effect of visual interference, created by the two-different sized perforations. These quasi-hallucinogenic effects are reminiscent of the optical effects of rock shows and the psychedelic drug experiences associated with youth and rock culture. As a stage, or in its alternate potential use as a café, the pavilion beckons as a space for human interaction on a grand or intimate scale.

Co-produced by Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg www.plugin.org

Dan Graham (New York) was born in Urbana, Illinois, and grew up in New Jersey. His diverse art practice encompasses performance, installation, writing, and video, and he is a leading figure in the history of 20^th century art. In the late 1970s Graham began creating his pavilions, steel and semi-reflective glass architectural structures that are the logical continuation of his research into subjectivity and objectivity, performer and audience, self and other, an exploration he began in the 1960s in video and performance art.

Suitable for all ages