Dennis Oppenheim

This volume provides a comprehensive account of Dennis Oppenheim's radical art practices of this explosive five-year period. Providing a principal means of spilling his Conceptual Art beyond the object or the gallery to investigate “real world” and “real time” embedded processes and places, Oppenheim’s steps into performance from 1969 enacted the artist’s body as the agent, material, and place of art, and extended his work toward multiple spaces and times, including cross-generational exchange.

Directing the viewer toward his body as the source and material of his works, Oppenheim’s procedures continue to critique the conventional material and conceptual limits of both sculpture and performance. This monograph follows Oppenheim’s conceptual performance works in slide, film, video, installation and photographic form from 1969-1973, including a substantial framing essay, a newly edited interview with Willoughby Sharp, and extensive extracts from the artist’s contemporaneous notes and statements.

About the Author

Nick Kaye  is Professor of Performance Studies at the University of Exeter. His research focuses on the development of performance theory and practice through sculpture, architecture, conceptual and performance art, experimental music, installation, and video. His books include Art into Theatre: Performance Interviews and Documents (1996), Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation (2000), Multi-Media: video-installation-Performance (2007), and Performing Presence (2011, with Gabriella Giannachi).
 
Amy van Winkle Oppenheim is Curator of the Dennis Oppenheim Archive, which contains the artist’s notebooks, sketchbooks, exhibition materials, correspondence, photographic documentation, project notes, a reference book collection, personal books and family records.