Dennis Oppenheim
Dennis Oppenheim ( born September 6, 1938 in Electric City, Washington, † January 21, 2011 in New York City ) was an American pioneer of land, body art and installation artist.
Life and work
Oppenheim was born in a small town in northern Grant County in Washington State, the son of David Oppenheim and Catherine Belknap. He studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts ( CCAC ) in Oakland. Between 1958 and 1962 he lived in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he worked as a construction worker and in the public relations field in addition to his artistic production. At Stanford University in 1965, he made his master's degree. In 1966 he moved to New York and gave there first art lessons at various schools. In 1968 he had his first solo exhibition in New York at the John Gibson Gallery. His first Earthwork project he led in 1967 along with fellow artists Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer through.
Then he turned more and more to the body art. In his carried out under the title Aspen Projects performances, he examined the relationship between body and object. " Dennis Oppenheim made use of in these performances of his own body as an artistic medium, exploring interactions with natural elements, reflected biological processes and stated early in the boundaries of the video medium. " Combined since the early 1970s Oppenheim building materials, stone, wood and metal systems to large-scale sculptures and room-filling installations.
In 1982 he married the American sculptor Alice Aycock, with whom he built Ghost Towns and tree houses. Last lived and worked in New York Oppenheim.