Two-Way Mirror / Hedge Arabesque by Dan Graham _ Fondazione Zegna _ Trivero _ Italy

text by XERXES COOK
photography by GIOVANNA SILVA
portrait by THIERRY BAL

 

“All my work, you have to walk. They’re about time,” begins Dan Graham as he discusses his latest work, Two-Way Mirror / Hedge Arabesque, which comprises a free-standing pavilion made from steel and glass dissected by a high hedge of yew. It is installed at the entrance to a valley filled with thousands of rhododendrons in the foothills of the Italian Alps, as part of the Fondazione Zegna’s All’Aperto art and ecology initiative. “As you walk around the piece,” the 72-year-old artist says, “the sky changes, and your body changes, and you can see the body changing and other people’s bodies changing.”

The pavilion is dedicated to “peace and Mies [van der Rohe].” One side of its curved glass is transparent; the other reflects and distorts light. “I never realized it, but my work is very impressionistic…