Dennis Oppenheim (1938)
United States
Biography :
Born in 1938 (†2011) in Electric City in Washington State (United States), Dennis Oppenheim studied at the California College of Fine Arts and Crafts in Oakland then obtained a Master of Fine Arts at Stanford University in Palo Alto (California) in 1965.
At the end of the 1960s, the meeting of his compatriots Robert Smithson (1938-1973) and Michael Heizer (1944) moved him away from the classic conception of studio work and the work of art intended for the museum to involved in Land Art which consists of linking art and life by using the framework and materials of nature: his first "Earthworks" were designed, such as Boundary Split (1968) and Annual Rings (1968) where he digs the ice, Directed seeding (1969) and Canceled Crop (1969) created using agricultural machines, or the Cobalt Vectors-An Invasion (1978) on Mirage Lake. These works which raise the question of man's intervention in nature are perpetuated by photography or film, documents which at the same time become works submitted to the spectator.
At the same time, he met Vito Acconci (1940-2017) who, too, questioned the function of art and the role of the artist, through the body art that it developed from 1969: it involves staging the body of the artist and that of the spectator in experimental performances. Dennis Oppenheim then produced his “Body Works” – preserved through photography – in which he used his body as a receptacle for moving energies, e.g. in Reading Position for Second Degree Burn, performance, 1970. But faced with the growing danger of the artist's interventions on himself, he replaced his own body from 1974 with a puppet, in installations called post-performances, as in Attempt to Raise Hell. devil (1974), where the incessant repetition of the violent act provokes a transference carrying anguish in the spectator. He exploits this feeling again in Falling Room (1979), a brutal and gratuitous fall from a metal cage, as in he wanted to encourage the public to favor a sensitive approach rather than a rational one.
The same year, Theme for a Major Hit, 1974, featured 22 puppets 80 cm high and suspended from the ceiling; powered by a motor, these puppets move to the rhythm of a song written by Dennis Oppenheim himself, played on guitar and drums by other visual artists. If the work seems to take an ironic look at life, the refrain reveals the artist's journey towards Conceptual Art, which still agitates the avant-garde of the 1970s: "It ain't what you make, it's what makes you do it” (“it’s not what you do, it’s what you do it for”).
All of these experiences testify to an attraction to sculpture, most often associated with a dynamic, which will continue to develop in varied forms, always strongly implanted in a given space, whether interior, exterior or public: unusual objects (e.g.: Watchflower, 2004), machinery (e.g.: Saturn Up-Draft, 1979) or complex and enigmatic installations designed like factories without production (e.g.: Final Stroke-Project for a Glass Factory, 1980 ), monumental or even habitable structures which often combine sculpture, architecture and theater (e.g.: Chair/Pool, 1996; Wave Forms, 2007, giant bells; Electric Kiss, 2009, drop of chocolate-bulb of a Russian church assimilated to the form aerial view of a kiss ending; Radiant Fountains, 2010, giant illuminated drop of water; Still Dancing, 2010; Swarm, 2011, evocation of a flock of swallows).
So many creations which are designed from preparatory drawings and made in very varied materials, traditional or industrial, with the use of everyday objects, directly or taking their form on another scale (e.g.: Brush Building, 2005), but also sound, film or video, electric light, fireworks…
In a conversation with artist Bill Beckley, Dennis Oppenheim explains his approach: "You are operating on the operation, not the thing. When you are operating on the operation you have found a way to separate yourself from the things and you operate in a more intangible way." (“You work on the operation and not on the object. So you can detach yourself from it and operate in a more dematerialized way”).
Aspiration for total freedom in artistic creation outside traditional categories, hence the multiplicity of forms that his works take, even if they can convey the same idea, such as Decomposition Gallery from 1968 and Digestion, Gypsum Gypsies from 1989 which illustrate all two the result of energy absorption.
Dennis Oppenheim's work carries a social and political dimension, by showing a set of signs to decipher, problems to resolve, which force the viewer to question the fundamental instability of the universe to which he is exposed. belongs and, ultimately, on the superior value of nature and the energy of the spirit compared to material things, not without a touch of poetry.
Winner of numerous awards throughout his career, Dennis Oppenheim's work is present in numerous public collections around the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the MoMA in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Ottawa (Canada), the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, the Hroshima City Museum (Japan), the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Kyungkido (Korea), the Museo nacional Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Helsinki City Art Museum, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Tate Gallery in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels, the Museum of Art and History of Geneva, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Saint-Étienne (France), the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, in addition to the multiple creations of the artist installed in a public environment. (Martine Heudron) (Source, pdf, Hôtel Drouot sales catalog)