Dennis Oppenheim U.S.A., 1938-2011

Dennis Oppenheim is one of the world's leading contemporary art masters of the 20th century. He has sought original and experimental directions without conforming to formalism. His early works from the late 60s to the 70s showed complex tendencies such as land art, body art, and performance. Since then, the propensity has changed in various ways, ranging from sculptures and installations using objects or machines to public sculptures. However, for Oppenheim, form has a meaning as a tool to build the artist's ideas, and in many cases, it is concluded that his work is conceptual art in that the artist's conceptual delivery is the main key to his work. However, categorizing Oppenheim's works, which seeks to reduce the mind's a priori by essence and intuition, is the task of creating a limitation in understanding his work.

Oppenheim first connected with Korea when he installed a work titled ‘IMPERSONATION STATION’ at Olympic Park for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Since then, he has been well known for many installation sculptures, including the 2008 Busan Biennale's ‘ELECTRIC KISS’ and the 2010 ‘LIGHT CHAMBER’ on Haeundae Beach. Despite his illness, he had a special attachment to Korea, as he visited Korea for the Sculpture Symposium held in Masan in September 2010. Dennis Oppenheim, who was passionate about his work until the last minute, ended his life in an apartment in New York City in January 2011, three months before his retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Saint-Etienne. During his lifetime, he held nearly 300 solo exhibitions at several world-class art museums and galleries, including the Tate in the United Kingdom, the Whitney Museum in the United States, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.