UBS 12 x 12: Tim Louis Graham

Chicago artist Tim Louis Graham uses two photos of the famous East German defector Conrad Schumann and chain-link fencing in his new installation {...}. Graham assembled the four 6 x 6 foot chain-link panels into a cage-like structure, and then dismantled it by cutting away thousands of tiny pieces of chain links, creating a minimalist cube. The exhibition opens October 1 during First Fridays and runs through October 31, 2010.

The structure with its chain links is titled Counter-Clockwise, which alludes to the direction taken when Graham cut the chain-link into pieces he leaves on the floor. The photo of Schumann at age 19 in 1961 shows him jumping over the three-day-old Berlin Wall, then made of a low barbed wire fence. The Berlin Wall layers historical context onto the everyday association of a fence as confining and defining movement and space. While the iconic image captures his defiant leap, suggestive of escape and freedom, it is contrasted by the second photograph of Schumann in a police station in West Berlin. Schumann had ambiguous feelings about his defection and eventually committed suicide in 1998.

Engaged in the themes of time, escape, and confinement, Graham says, "I am interested in the way that time is not contained in single moments, but unfolds in and as an expanse, building upon itself, like a wave that never breaks."

The artist discusses his work in a public conversation with his sister Katherine Graham, who describes its philosophical implications, on Tuesday, October 12, 2010, at 6 pm.

UBS 12 x 12: Tim Louis Graham