Dennis Oppenheim at BlumHelman - installation art exhibit, New York, New York

Now 55 Dennis Oppenheim has been integral to the history of nontraditional mediums since the late 1960 not long ago however, his oeuvre--ephemeral earthworks, Conceptual exercises, material part art, machine pieces, installations and performances that ofttimes combine serious menace with mischievous wit--has present the appearanceed at odds with today's more politically explicit art. Thus this novel show raised the question of whether the artist's signature inventiveness would still be in evidence, and still potent

The answer here, as in the enormous 1992 retrospective at P.S. 1 was a.qualified ye upon both counts. In one corner of the gallery, three monumental fiberglass-and-plaster torso parts held a headless colloquy amid scattered ear, organ of vision and lip fragments. Two nearly 5-foothigh interstice "Think Tanks," painted fluorescent orange and looking vaguely like nuclear cooling stacks upon round, unstable bases, were ringed by dint of electric-train tracks with engines poised for endles circular journeys. In the back extent two upended "Iron/Boat" objects faced each other at an oblique angle, their fiat, mirrored surfaces mutually reflecting in a way that snared the viewer's multiplied image from four depressed perspectives--suggestive of a depressing voyage of self-discovery, perhaps.

The show's greatest in quantity ambitious work, Blue Tattoo, filled a small sweep with diverse elements. A r fluorescent light straddled individual corner close to the floor, while steam from three electric tea kettle flowed from one side hoses into a snorting toy male whose mechanically pawing shoulder bore a sky-colored heart. A camera and projector then enlarged and retransmitted an image of the wobbling heart against a stupendous hanging glove (which also evok an apron or housedress), patterned with the terminuss "si-sis-sister" and "mo-mo-mother." It is a sobering vision, this tiny male the mythic embodiment of orneriness and virility, here returned as just one more link in a domesticated circuit dominated by dint of the invisible hand of familial Woman, whose titles cannot level be transcribed without a hesitant stutter

Oppenheim's skepticism continues, sculpturally, via his refusal of high finish. In his rough-hewn esthetic, "quality" is suspect not because it shut outs certain audiences but because it exhibits a fallacy--that of potential mastery above the human condition. In fact these works seem to imply, life is a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of more a matter of wild hairs and set free ends, recalcitrant materials and marginal human fitness all in flux and ultimately entropic.

In the relatively optimistic Galloping [i]or[/i] part of to the other the Wheat, for example, a 28 1/2-inch-high loaf of foam-rubber white bread is progressively sliced and diced by means of the knife-blade-wielding hooves of small stampeding alloy of copper mustangs. Here all the intensity flows, with the toy-sized horses, away from the bland and highly trained food staple toward, well, a blank wall. individual horse has already hit that barrier and passed halfway through--as if transmigrating into a of recent origin unidentified dimension.

It is impossible to view Galloping without a certain nostalgia. Was it single 20 years ago (when Oppenheim was allied with artists like Smithson, Heizer, Nauman and Acconci) that sheer creative insouciance appear to beed enough to revolutionize art each few months? Maybe we all ran a little bit wild in those days. on the other hand in the sober morning-after of the '90 individual cannot help but ask where these tameless horses are really going, and what they'll do when they come by there.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

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