60 - Dan Graham (American, 1942-2022)

Dan Graham (American, 1942-2022) Three Linked Cubes – 1986 Interior Design for Space Showing Videos Aluminum, glass, and 2-way mirror glass 66 x 193 x 46 cm Edition of three Provenance: Galerie Vega, Liège The Robert and Suzanne Pannier Collection, Bruges Literature: Markus Müller, Thierry de Duve, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Brian Hatton, Eric De Bruyn and John Miller, Dan Graham: Œuvres 1965-2000 [exhibition catalog], Paris-Musées, 2001, p.221, cat.93.1 1986 With a photograph signed and dated by the artist as a certificate of authenticity. Three Linked Cubes is a tabletop scale model for Interior Design for Space Showing Videos (1986), produced in an edition of three. In its reduced form, the alternating transparent and mirrored planes articulate the essential spatial and optical logic of the pavilion, translating the architectural structure into a sculptural object that can itself be observed. The model relates directly to Graham’s investigation of pavilions as structures in which architecture, perception and the social relations of viewing converge. The full-scale Interior Design for Space Showing Videos consists of a series of rectangular bays enclosed by alternating transparent and two-way mirror glass panels. Designed to accommodate video monitors and spectators, the installation functions simultaneously as an exhibition architecture and an optical environment: viewers encounter the images on the screens alongside reflections of other spectators and of themselves. The work was exhibited in several European venues in 1986–87, and a version of the work subsequently entered the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, where it is held today. The present work was acquired from Galerie Vega, Liège, around 1987； the collector’s archives include a letter dated 10 April 1987 from Manette Repriels, director of the gallery, offering the work for sale. Galerie Vega had presented Dan Graham in a solo exhibition in April 1976 and continued its collaboration with the artist in the following years.