Oppenheim on Show, July 2010

This Thursday, July 1st, Off the Wall Part 1: Thirty Performative Actions will open to the public at New York City's Whitney Museum of American Art. The exhibition focuses on actions which displace the site of the artwork from an object to the body, acting in relation to, or directly onto, the physical space of the gallery.

The exhibition, curated by Chrissie Iles, includes Dennis Oppenheim's 1973 installation Echo which fills the the gallery walls with the image of a hand slapping the wall onto which it is projected accompanied by its sound, reverberating through the wall. The reverberating sound:

"suggests the phenomena of a sound passing through a solid. In this way it carries the physical reality of this act through this barrier to the other side into a space unavailable to sight." DO

First shown at MOCA San Francisco in 1973, Echo is now part of the Whitney's permanent collection.

The following day, Friday, July 2nd, another Oppenheim piece will be included in an exhibition opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Material Interchange for Joe Stranard, Aspen, Colorado (1970) will be on exhibit as part of Between Here and There: Passages in Contemporary Photography, which runs through February 13th of next year.

"Off the Wall Part 1: Thirty Performative Actions" will be at the Whitney Museum of American Art from July 1st to September 19th.
"Between Here and There: Passages in Contemporary Photography" will be at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from July 2nd to February 13th.