Robert Graham: Early Work 1963-1973 brings together rarely seen works by
this American artist, providing an overview and reconsideration of
Graham's initial engagement with Minimalism and figurative sculpture.
The exhibition, held at David Zwirner in 2011, comprised one of the
first major presentations of the artist's early work in the United
States since 1972. Modeled after images found on television or in
popular magazines, such as Life, Graham's early work presents
Plexiglas-encased environments populated by miniature wax figurines
engaged in leisurely or pleasurable activities. The ethereal surfaces of
the artist's plastic enclosures are evocative of the highly finished and
meticulous objects that have become associated with the so-called
"Finish Fetish" aesthetic, and their interior spaces are suggestive of
the geography of 1960s California as well as the modernist domestic
interiors popularized by John Entenza's Case Study House Program. Over
the course of his career, Graham went on to develop an exceptionally
focused artistic practice characterized by a consistent preoccupation
with scale and the human figure. Since the early 1970s, his works have
been exhibited widely, at such venues as Kunstverein Hamburg, and the
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. Work by the
artist is held in major museum collections around the world, and Graham
has also received numerous public commissions, including the 1984
Olympic Gateway in Los Angeles and the Duke Ellington Memorial in
Central Park, New York (1997). Born in Mexico City in 1938, he died in
Santa Monica, California, in 2008.
