Dennis Oppenheim

Dennis Oppenheim

            Dennis Oppenheim was a conceptual artist from America who worked with performance, photography, sculpture, and even the earth.  One of his most well-known works was Reading Position for Second Degree Burn, which was a performance piece in which he lay in the sun for five hours with a book lying open on his chest.  At the end of the five hours, the book was removed to reveal a second-degree sunburn around the outline of where the book had been sitting.  Oppenheim also did installations, such as Attempt to Raise Hell, where a figure would repeatedly strike a bell while lunging.  Dennis Oppenheim also got involved with an earthworks art movement, in which he would cut shapes into snow, wheat fields, and other types of landscapes.

            I like Dennis Oppenheim’s public artworks, such as Device to Root Out Evil, which seems to defy gravity, as a church that is upside-down and balanced on its steeple.  I also liked his Reading Position for a Second-Degree Burn because of the concept of using the sun and skin as artistic mediums.  I also really enjoyed the concept behind his Two Stage Transfer Drawings.  In these drawings, he draws a design with a marker upon a participants back, and the participant attempts to draw the same drawing on a wall based on what movements he feels on his back.  Oppenheim considers this process “drawing through him”.