Prof. Francesco Carelli

 

Dennis Oppenheim (1938 – 2011) was an American conceptual artist, performance artist, earth artist, sculptor and photographer. Dennis Oppenheim’s early artistic practice is an epistemological questioning about the nature of art, the making of art and the definition of art: a meta-art that arose when strategies of the Minimalists were expanded to focus on site and context. As well as an aesthetic agenda, the work progressed from perceptions of the physical properties of the gallery to the social and political context, largely taking the form of permanent public sculpture in the last two decades of a highly prolific career, whose diversity could exasperate his critics.

Conceptual works. Executed in New York, Paris and Amsterdam and documented in photography, the series Indentations (1968) consisted of the removal of objects, exposing the impression of each object at that location. Viewing Stations (1967) were built as platforms for observing land vistas, suggesting an embodied notion of vision. The artist presents the base as the art itself, a viewer becomes an object to be looked at, a conceptual reversal.

Earthworks:
Social systems were overlaid on natural systems in Oppenheim’s earthworks. In Annual Rings (1968) the schemata of lines depicting the annual growth of a tree was mapped by plowing snow on opposite sides of St. John’s River, the boundary of the US and Canada. The earthwork relates geo-political boundaries, time zones.
Body – performance works. Oppenheim’s body art grew out of his awareness of his own body when executing earthworks. In these works, the artist’s body was both the subject and the object, providing the opportunity to work on a surface not exterior to the self, giving total control over the artwork. These body art actions were later assimilated into the canon of performance art.
Genetic works. A series of works were made in collaboration with Oppenheim’s children, whom he saw as extensions of himself. In a diptych titled 2- Stage Transfer Drawing. (Advancing to a Future State), he maked a drawing on a wall at the same time that his son attempts to replicate the drawing on his father’s back, a procedure reversed in 2- Stage Transfer Drawing. (Returning to a Past State). (1971) when he replicated the drawing on his son’s back.