Dennis Oppenheim

(USA) *1938 in Electric City, Washington; †2011 in New York

Dennis Oppenheim, a forerunner of American concept art, has since the 1960’s constantly explored and renewed the boundaries of art. With his land-art projects he broke out of the space constrictions of galleries and museums, and in spectacular performances as a body-artist he was an early exponent of video art and film as a means of expression. Drawings and photographs are as much part of his multifarious output as are object-works, sculptures and installations. In more recent times he has created fantastic large-scale architectonic sculptures for public open spaces as a way of exploring the transformation of cityscapes. His works on display in ”Blickachsen 7”, ”Trees (From Alternative Landscape Components).” similarly confront the observer with his own habitual way of seeing things: robbed of their function, everyday objects in the living environment grow into trees representing civilization itself. In the Kurpark we find an installation consisting of three steel tree structures, onto which household and garden objects are mounted, forming an extraordinary crown to the tree. A single ”Tree” crowned with sanitary ware thus claims its place in the upper castle courtyard.