Dennis Oppenheim

di bluesoul 09—Gen—2011 / 3:08 PM

Born in Electric City, Washington, 1938.
School of Arts and Crafts, Oakland (B.F.A., 1965)
and Stanford University, Palo Alto, (M.F.A., 1965).
Lives and works in New York City.

The artistic trajectory of Dennis Oppenheim has always been characterized by its incorrigible discontinuity, motivated then as today by an intensely adventurous curiosity.

Following his earthworks (1967-69) and body-works came the installations (from 1972 onwards), using puppets as their main theme (the harrowing piece “Attempt to Raise Hell” at the Pompidou Center).
Later on, at the end of the seventies, Oppenheim produced what he calls his “machine pieces” which, by denying the object its sculptural status, are presented as complex constructions, systems open to both an aleatory and an enigmatic mode of functioning…
There is an interesting progression from the early machine pieces which seemed infused with a confidence in rationality and in the possibility of grasping the structure of the mind to the late works which were designed to literally blow up and which seem to celebrate the triumph of irrationality and chaos.

Art Press, January 1993, Dennis Oppenheim: A Process of Discontinuity, by Eleanor Heartney

Ammetto di non avere le competenze adatte a giudicare i lavori di questo celebre artista, ma li ho trovati piuttosto interessanti, nello spoiler(causa lunghezza) la gallery con tutte le sue opere.
[spoiler]