Notes on "Room for Forced Perspective"
The work functions, at least in part, as a manifestation of an initially hypothetical situation. For example, in response to the question, What would it do to display a room which from a single vantage point appeared to recede more abruptly into space than would be expected?, a proposition in space is devised. If the work is thought of as a proposition, then it functions parallel to diagrams, sketches, and models in that its purpose is to make visible a transitory abstract mental construction to enable a working through of problems. In this sense the work may be seen as a model, simply larger than the general conception of one; a diagram or sketch which occupies the same space as the viewer. It is the literalization of an abstract concept.
The work confuses the traditional object/viewer relationship. The viewer of the work is at the same time inside of the work –– becoming part of the work –– while the work itself is simultaneously the art object and the container of display.
"I wanted it [the installation Public Space/Two Audiences] to function doubly as art and as simply an exhibition pavilion (for itself), following the examples of Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion or Lissitzky's two exhibition rooms. The artwork 'placed on display by my environment' was the architectural container, as its own material structure; at the same time it was designed to be a display container for the viewers inside...".
-- Dan Graham, Notes on Public Space/Two Audiences, Two-Way Mirror Power: Selected Writings by Dan Graham on His Art, p. 155.
"One of the intentions was that the spectators, instead of contemplating art objects within the room environment (the architectural enclosure), be themselves displayed by the container. ... The spectator is made socially and psychologically more self-conscious. This is the inverse of the usual loss of 'self' when a spectator looks at a conventional art-work. ... In Public Space/Two Audiences the work looks back; the spectator inversely sees his projection of 'self' (conventionally missing) returned specularly by the material (and structural) aspects of the work."
-- Birgit Pelzer, "Vision in Process," October, Fall 1979, p. 111, n. 10, citing Graham’s Tracks, pp. 57-8.