, Plaça de la Porta de Santa Catalina
Conceptual works: Executed in New York, Paris and Amsterdam and documented in photography, the series
Indentations (1968) consisted of the removal of objects, exposing the impression of each object at that location.
Viewing Stations (1967) were built as platforms for observing land vistas, suggesting an embodied notion of vision.
Genetic works: A series of works were made in collaboration with Oppenheim's children, whom he saw as extensions of himself. In a diptych titled
2- Stage Transfer Drawing. (Advancing to a Future State)., he makes a drawing on a wall at the same time that his son attempts to replicate the drawing on his father's back, a procedure reversed in
2- Stage Transfer Drawing. (Returning to a Past State). (1971) when he replicates the drawing on his son's back. Recorded in still photography, film and videotape, the performances were first exhibited as floor-to ceiling loop film projections. He also collaborated with his first wife in
Forming Sounds (1972) and referred to his father, David Oppenheim, in the works
Polarties (1972) and
Identity Transfer (1970).
Film / video installations: Oppenheim began to produce
installation art in the early seventies. These works were often autobiographical. In
Recall (1974), a video monitor is an installation component, positioned in front of a pan of turpentine. The monitor shows a close up of Oppenheim's mouth as he verbalizes a stream-of-consciousness monologue induced by the smell, on his experiences in art school in the fifties.
Post-performance- biographical works: In a series of eight works Oppenheim called "post-performance," the artist spoke through his surrogate performance figures about the end of the avant-garde, his own art-making, in dialogue as opposites or as in
Theme for a Major Hit (1974) acted under motorized control to a rock song with his lyrics, "It ain’t what you do, it’s what makes you do it," recorded by a band of Soho artists. Reflecting the underlying content of the post-modern, it is an "analysis of its own origins" with an "awareness of its vulnerability."
Machineworks: In the early eighties, room size sculptural installations took the form of factories and machines to visualize the genesis of an artwork before it becomes form.
Final Stroke- Project for a Glass Factory (1981) analogized thinking patterns as moving parts. Vacuum cleaners and powered heaters activated raw material through sieves, troughs, stacks and vents, as the stages of processing in the production of ideas. The machines became projection structures for fireworks, producing thought lines in the air, as in
Newton Discovering Gravity (1984).
Sculpture: While he continues to use sound, light and motion in the sculptural work in the late eighties, the imagery includes ordinary objects in different scales or as a collision of objects. In several works, animals appear. A group of taxidermy deer produce flames from the tips of their antlers, in
Digestion. Gypsum Gypsies. (1989).
Public Sculpture: Oppenheim experimented with titled and cantilevered form in
Device to Root Out Evil (1997). Included as part of the
Venice Biennale, it uses hand blown Venetian glass on the country church's roof and steeple. In 1999, a version using translucent corrugated fiberglass was installed as a permanent work in Palma de Mallorca. In the commissioned public work that followed, Oppenheim integrated the function of the building or the site in the work itself.
Jump and Twist (1999) is an industrial, anthropologic work in three parts; on the plaza, through the facade of the building and suspended from the atrium's ceiling as translucent rotating form. The public work
Light Chamber (2011) at the Justice Center in Denver, is an open room with translucent walls derived from the petals of many flowers. ==See also==