Dennis Oppenheim

From 30 January 2010
Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Dennis Oppenheim, a key figure in the US Land Art movement, is an influential international artist who for five decades has created sculpture, installations, interventions, performances, actions, happenings and photographic works. His work is characterised by a constant shifting of style and ceaseless creative output.Trees: From Alternative Landscape Components, a flamboyant large-scale work, will be on display at Yorkshire Sculpture Park from 30 January 2010, and is the first time this work has been shown in the UK.

Trees: From Alternative Landscape Components (2006) comprises a highly artificial landscape formed of fluorescent trees, fake hedgerows, seemingly genetically modified flowers and the Trees, which have branches laden with a range of curious domestic artefacts including baths, toilets, sinks, dog kennels, dustbins, plastic chairs and parts of fences. This installation was created for the 2006 exhibition Alternative Landscape Components: A New Land Art at the Arsenal Gallery in Central Park, New York and three outdoor locations across the city.

As with much of Oppenheim’s earlier work, the Trees act as a dialogue, this time between the natural and artificial landscape and as a comment on the act of creating environments. The first location for this work, the seemingly natural environment of Central Park, was purposefully designed and manipulated by man. Similarly, the Bretton estate, home to YSP’s 18th century rolling landscape, was originally a carefully designed private pleasure ground and now, as a open air gallery, provides a contrasting backdrop to Oppenheim’s installation. Oppenheim also explores the mechanisms and communication of how artistic ideas are formed – the emotions we experience as the viewer and how involved we become in the work. His work often uses an element of risk or humour in order to fully involve the viewer and communicate his experience of the creative process.

Trees: From Alternative Landscape Components will be sited in the Lower Park area of YSP’s historic 500- acre landscape and can be seen throughout the year.

This loan is courtesy of Dennis Oppenheim and Galerie Scheffel, Bad Homburg, Germany.

Notes to Editors:

Dennis Oppeheim was born in Electric City, Washington State in 1938 and studied at the California College of Arts and at Stanford University. He lives and works in New York City. Oppenheim was part of the important exhibition Earthworks, considered to have presented Land Art as a movement for the first time. Curated by Willoughby Sharp at the Dwan Gallery New York, the exhibition featured work by Oppenheim alongside other leading land artists of the 1960s and 1970s such as Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Richard Long and Robert Smithson. Oppenheim has shown extensively around the world and is represented in many leading public and private collections, including Tate, London, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Reina Sofía, Madrid and Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Belgium.

As an independent art gallery, accredited museum and registered charity (number 1067908), YSP’s core work is made possible by investment from Arts Council England, Wakefield Council, The Henry Moore Foundation and West Yorkshire Grants. http://www.ysp.co.uk

Yorkshire Sculpture Park
West Bretton
Wakefield WF4 4LG
United Kingdom
http://www.ysp.co.uk

Open daily 10am-5pm
Admission free