2:00pm at The MAC David Graeve will discuss his upcoming exhibition, Social Memory #3, Conversations with Sophie, Target MAC Drawing.
Graeve’s site-specific installation in the Square Gallery will include a two part experience. Graeve will present a time-based action art performance within a one mile radius of The MAC to gather source material for the installation. Documentation of the performance in the form of video and stills will be projected through a screen composed of varying scale balloons ranging from three to eight feet in diameter. The balloons serve as a filter to mediate and further abstract the projected images, while physically enveloping the viewer. Other video source material will be derived from collaboration with the French artist Sophie Berard’s interpretation of Duke Ellington’s “blues in orbit” through movement and physical interaction. Interest in community activism inspires Graeve’s approach. The performative aspect of the piece seeks to elucidate how individuals shape a collective community, in this case the Dallas community.
Often relating to environmental concerns, human rights initiatives and social activism, Graeve’s large scale balloon installations have gained wide spread attention at venues across the country. Sites include the Aspen Ideas Festival, Dallas Art Fair and Discovery Green. A visual departure from the balloon installations, Grave’s large-scale cast aluminum and auto paint sculpture along with a site-specific fused glass block sculpture can be viewed locally at the Texas Sculpture Garden.
David Graeve was born in St. Joseph, Minnesota. He grew up in a household of social activism -his father worked for the Democratic Party, and his mother was involved in first wave feminism. Graeve obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts, with a focus on sculpture, in 1991 from the University of Minnesota. In 2011, Graeve obtained his Masters of Fine Arts, emphasis on sculpture, from the University of Houston.
Grave cofounded the Soap Factory in Minneapolis, where he worked as the Public Relations Manager, Curator and Installation Manager for nine years between 1991 and 2000. Since then he has been heavily involved in major art projects in Houston where he co-founded ISSE (International Society of Social Engineers) at the University of Houston and is an organizer and participating member of Culture Crawl Collective (CCC) a radical group of experimental artists exploring nonconventional forms of expression.
Grave is a recipient of The City of Minneapolis Award of Merit Q Award, The Curators Award of Merritt at Galveston Art Center, and the Davis-Ryan Award. David Graeve is represented by Deborah Colton Gallery in Houston, Texas.
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
