Artists

Dan Graham, Ettore Spalletti

Press release

Marian Goodman Gallery is pleased to announce Ettore Spalletti Dan Graham: an exhibition of two artists in dialogue which will be on view through June 20. Though different in their artistic backgrounds, each shared a desire to offer a "space" where forms and colors—whether absorbed or reflected—draw the gaze and engage the body of the viewer and explore shifts in perception. In the work of Spalletti (1940-2019) form, color, and space come together to establish a relationship with the viewer, who in turn becomes an ally. Graham (1942-2022) placed the visitor at the center of the perceptual experience, compelling them to see themselves while observing others, within a space that transforms into a landscape. Belonging to no movement, both rejected categorization. Ettore Spalletti fostered a dialogue between classicism and contemporary art through a practice in which painting and sculpture merge in the pursuit of an essential dimension and a new conception of spatiality, in constant dialogue with the art of the past and, in particular, with the masters of the Italian Renaissance, from Piero della Francesca to Raffaello. In his artistic language, geometries and archetypal forms, given substance by color, transform painting into sculpture, while sculpture becomes painterly. His colors are not merely "surface" colors, but "atmospheric" ones, possessing a profound emotional quality: they embrace the observer, reflecting light back into the space they occupy. "Blue is a color that is always around us; it is a color that envelops us…The sky is always around us; it never repeats itself in the same way; every day it offers you a different blue and a different light. They are never defined within an ideology, but they are defined within their own transformation. Sometimes, when someone speaks to me about monochromes, I say that mine are landscapes." - Ettore Spalletti Dan Graham advocated a social and psychological conception of art by creating works that are both conceptual and functional, constantly straddling the boundary between architecture and sculpture. His steel-and-glass pavilions expand the surrounding landscape due to the unique properties of reflection, refraction, and diffusion of light, which shift as the surrounding scenery changes, in response to visitors' movements within the space. The glass panels that make up the pavilions are transparent on one side and reflect light like a mirror on the other, thereby inviting viewers to interact with the work and explore its changing nature. The space becomes a place of "disorientation" where the boundary between interior and exterior, public and private, blurs through reflections and transparencies. On the ground floor of the gallery, Colonna sola, Carte rosa, and Tight Squeeze face one another and face us, responding to the shifting light they absorb and reflect. The concept of the column has been present in Spalletti's practice since the 1970s, reflecting a desire for verticality that is consistently recognizable across different moments. In Colonna sola, 2014, the color that constitutes its body triggers a chromatic fantasy based on the transition from painting to architecture; its base contains all the lines of geometry: the horizontal, the vertical, the oblique, and the curve. In the diptych Carte rosa, 1998, the work, painted on both sides, breaks free from the wall, responding to the mood of the environment. At times, it is alabaster or onyx that, through light, reveals the color hidden within, such as in Scatola di colore, 1991 and Portacipria, 2013. "Pink is the color of the skin that never has a fixed form of its own, but is constantly transformed by the mood we are in… Gray, for me, is welcoming; it complements all the other colors well… I prepare a mixture of chalk and pigments, then apply it in successive layers, every day at the same time for nearly a month. Finally, when I break up the pigments by abrasion, the color is revealed and the painting emerges. Looking at it, you cannot tell whether the color moves from the surface inward or whether it comes from the inside outward." – Ettore Spalletti Graham's Tight Squeeze, 2015, a hybrid structure between sculpture and architecture, was originally designed for the roof of the Cité Radieuse in Marseille. Consisting of two panels, one straight and made of perforated metal, and the other curved and made of two-way mirror glass, the work traces the undulating form of a wave in space, echoing the "vertical city" built by Le Corbusier facing the Mediterranean Sea. Both enclosed (self-contained) and open (devoid of a door and roof), Tight Squeeze, enters into dialogue with the architecture of the historical gallery space, the garden and, above all, with Spalletti's work exhibited alongside it. Tight Squeeze is an invitation to visitors to interact with it, to enter. The reflective and transparent panel creates a complex interplay of reflections, mirrors, distortions, and superimpositions; a visual perception that transforms depending on whether one is inside or outside. We are not mere observers: we become both perceiving subjects and perceived objects. The perforated metal panel, playing with light and shadow, enhances both the physical and political experience. "…my pavilions are utopian because they allow you to see both transparency and reflection at the same time from both sides of the walls. I use glass with variable reflectivity, which today allows one to control the percentage of reflection on both sides, and often, if there are multiple reflections, I keep the reflectivity low so as to blend it with transparency. However, the relationship between the two also depends on the conditions of the sky and the external light; indeed, it changes constantly, and this creates a landscape-like quality in my architecture." - Dan Graham The dialogue between Spalletti's and Graham's works continues on the lower level of the gallery. Untitled, 1976–1992, a series of 50 graphite drawings, now in the collection of the MNAM–Centre Pompidou, are reproduced as lithographs and constitutes Spalletti's formal vocabulary. Fields of color, lines, archetypal figures or those transformed from the world of geometry—memories the artist has drawn upon throughout his life—take shape in Orizzontale, 1996, Vuoto, 2010, and Grigio, argento, 2015. At times the frame opens outward, taking on the responsibility of space; at times it softens, becoming rounded; at other times it contains a space bent by color. Nearby, the model Half Cylinder/Perforated Steel Triangular Enclosure (2008) also perfectly illustrates Graham's exploration of the geometry of forms. Similar to three-dimensional drawings, the models served as preparatory studies for future pavilions while also functioning as sculptures in their own right. The first models created in the late 1970s, prior to his first pavilion unveiled at documenta VII in 1982, stemmed from a reflection on habitable spaces and the use of one-way mirrors, an idea that came to him while observing office buildings. Created in 2008, Half Cylinder/ Perforated Steel Triangular Enclosure marks the first use of perforated metal in combination with two-way mirror glass, an association later revisited in Tight Squeeze.