Dan Graham

Dan Graham

            Dan Graham is an American artist who works with photography and video, but is most widely known for his outdoor structures.  Graham did a lot of work with magazines and advertisements within those magazines.  He experimented with the idea of magazine pages as pieces of individual art.  With his photography series Homes For America, Graham took photos of homes, diners, and other places that focus on the relationship between architecture and human behavior.  This led to his pavilion sculptures, which are made out of steel and glass.  Dan Graham creates spaces that viewers can walk into, and the glass is designed to disorient them.  There are mirrors, fish-eye lenses, water, and other glass tricks used within these popular pavilions. 

            I like Dan Graham’s experimentation with glass, and that he creates spaces that distort reality for the viewer.  Dan Graham is unique in the fact that he has created spaces like this not only for adults, but for children to enjoy as well.  He has made Children’s Pavilion, Funhouse for the Children of Saint-Janslein, and Skateboard Pavilion.  These are only a few of the many pavilions he has made, and I believe that he has mastered the architecture of making pavilions because he has made so many of them.  Dan Graham was interesting to research and I wanted to learn more about the different ways he uses glass to create alternate environments.  He uses the distorted glass to alter the way people can see things while experiencing his pavilions.