Dylan Graham (b.1972 Otautahi, New Zealand) was the 2007 artist in residence at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), in New York. Graham holds an MFA from the Sandberg Institute of Art and a BFA from Amstrdam’s Gerrit Rietveld Academy. He has recently held solo shows at New York’s Rare Gallery and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum in Ithica, New York. In addition, his work is featured in the West Collection in Philedelphia and the Dhondt-Dhaenens Museum in Deurle, Belgium. Graham has been featured on the Saatchi Gallery’s Website, and is represented by Gallery Em, Seoul. Dylan Graham currently lives and works in Amsterdam.
Graham's paper cutouts are monochromatic works made by delicately cutting paper down to minute details. The depictions are generally of dramatic global events seen from both a personal perspective as well as from within a historic-cultural context. The imagery is rendered in a complex silhouette and then the whole is decoratively embellished taking inspiration from folk traditions from around the world. They shift in their focus from large scale to minute detail which is also apparent in his installations, where an array of objects are brought together to form a complex environment. The place of art in culture, or folk art is something that he is constantly studying. Graham was born in New Zealand / Aoteroa, home of the Maori. Before the first settlers came to New Zealand the Maori had no written records. Their mythology and culture was recorded in stories and visual art.
Dylan Graham is trying to achieve an inherent natural balance and harmony in every work, resulting from a struggle between what to leave in and what to take out. He explores the impact of these events from a personal perspective, and how that in turn affects collective society on a massive scale. The repercussions of how colonialists, explorers, and settlers manipulated their logic/reasoning to justify inhumane practices are still being felt today.
For additional information about this artist, visit Mutual Art
