Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere: Dan Graham at the Inhotim Institute of Contemporary Art and Botanical Gardens

• Other Authors: Barcena, Bryan (authoraut)
• Format: Others
• Language: English; English
• Published: Florida State University
• Subjects: Art > History
• Online Access: http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_migr_etd-7706

My thesis explores the relationship between Dan Graham's installation (b. 1942) Bisected Triangle, Interior Curve (2002) and its location at the Inhotim Institute of Contemporary Art and Botanical Gardens in Brumadinho, Brazil. Visitors who encounter upon Graham's installation are confronted by a reflection of their own image set within an idyllic, even artificial, garden landscape. The triangular structure refracts and transposes the viewer's reflection through layers of semi-translucent glass thus creating an increasingly distorted and confusing vision whereby the bodies of its visitors seem to collide, overlap, and become kaleidoscopic amalgamates. By engineering this disconcerting visual encounter, Graham invites viewers to share in a communal experience set within the unique environment at Inhotim. This thesis inserts Graham's installation work into new conceptual and historical frameworks that prioritize the viewer's experience over the artist's intention. In this light, I detail the psychological effects experienced by visitors within Graham's mirrored Pavilions, and I then explain how these effects are altered by Bisected Triangle, Interior Curve's environment at Inhotim. Graham conceives of the large glass and steel installations as site-specific works. As such, the artist designs these structures to respond to the characteristics of the environment in which they are installed. However, Bisected Triangle, Interior Curve was relocated from its original location at Madison Square Park in New York to Inhotim. This thesis explores how the experience associated with Graham's Pavilion is altered by the larger historical, communal, and topographic framework provided by its adopted site at Inhotim. Inhotim, which opened to the public in 2007, is the first museum in the world that focuses almost exclusively on the exhibition of large-scale, site-specific installations. My thesis contends that the isolated and idyllic environment at Inhotim limits the effectiveness of works by artists such as Dan Graham. Although these artists claim that their works are engaged with socially conscious site-specific practice, I argue that the work's presence at Inhotim invalidates these claims. By existing as a site which was built explicitly for the exhibition of this genre of work, in essence a site for site-specificity, Inhotim neutralizes the local histories necessary to create the charged environment of interaction with site-specific installation art. === A Thesis submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. === Spring Semester, 2013. === March 22, 2013. === Brazil, Dan Graham, Gardens, Inhotim, Installation Art, Site-Specific Art === Includes bibliographical references. === Lauren Weingarden, Professor Directing Thesis; Robert Neuman, Committee Member; Adam Jolles, Committee Member.