Press Release
Artist Bio
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glass

Target Art in the Park
July 12 - October 31, 2002

At Madison Square Park
(Madison Avenue between 23rd and 25th Streets)

Target Art in the Park, an unprecedented three-year contemporary public art program in New York City, opens with its final exhibition on July 12, 2002 in Madison Square Park. The exhibition features new works by Dan Graham, Mark Dion, and Dalziel + Scullion that highlight the link between city life and the natural world, and explore the present and past of historic Madison Square Park. Visitors will encounter a series of cast-aluminum expedition tents invoking distant, exotic landscapes; a glass pavilion that creates a kaleidoscopic visual experience; and a field station for learning about the natural wonders of the park.

Graham has created a sleek two-room, walk-in pavilion of two-way reflective glass. During the past three decades, Graham has become internationally famous for his pavilions, which he has created for parks all over the world. Bisected Triangle, Interior Curve will be his first work for a New York City public park. Situated at the northwest end of Madison Square Park, Graham's pavilion will be a triangular form (20 feet x 24 feet x 24 feet) that integrates into the wedge-shaped geometry of the 19th-century park.

By entering the pavilion through a sliding door and looking out through its glass walls, park visitors can contemplate their own reflections while simultaneously observing the hustle and bustle along Broadway. This optical distortion - both meditative and visually disconcerting - can vary profoundly, as the glass walls become transparent or opaque in shifting natural light. Inside the calm of this unlikely urban oasis, viewers become increasingly conscious of movement and activity surrounding the structure: trees blowing above, passersby and traffic moving past, and even one's own reflected gaze. Just as moving through urban streets can prompt changing perspectives of the city, pausing inside Graham's pavilion induces park-goers to see a familiar place in a new light.

Artist Bio
Since his first solo show at the John Daniels Gallery in 1969, Dan Graham has exhibited internationally in four Documentas (1972, 1977, 1982 and 1992) and in solo shows and mid-career retrospectives at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Fundação de Serralves, Porto. A Conceptual artist, Graham emerged as a pioneer of performance and video art in the early 1960s. By the 1970s, he had begun working with quasi-architectural structures, the body of work for which he is best known. Born in 1942 in Illinois, Graham currently lives and works in New York.

Sponsorship
Target Art in the Park is organized by the Public Art Fund on behalf of the City Parks Foundation.

Minneapolis-based Target Stores serves guests at 1,081 stores in 47 states nationwide by delivering today's best retail trends at affordable prices. Whether visiting a Target store or shopping online at target.com, guests enjoy a fun and convenient shopping experience with access to thousands of unique and highly differentiated items. Target Stores, along with its parent company Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT), gives back more than $2 million a week to its local communities through grants and special programs. Since opening its first store in 1962, Target has partnered with nonprofit organizations, guests and team members to help meet community needs.

Location
Madison Square Park is located on Madison Avenue between 23rd and 25th Streets.
Nearest Subway: N, R, 6 to 23rd Street stop.