Dennis Oppenheim
dal 16/2/2006 al 24/3/2006
Segnalato da
16/2/2006
Dennis Oppenheim
Motinternational, London
Recall. A video, tightly focused on Oppenheim's lips, shows the artist talking about his art school years. The second element is a long metal tray placed in front of the monitor, filled with turpentine and ink reflecting back the image and infecting the gallery space with the smell of turpentine. There will be a series of talks taking place at MOT and the Whitechapel Art Gallery.
Recall
Curated by Lisa Le Feuvre
". . .A paint medium used to draw me into the past . . . as a sensory catalyst . . .
activating my reflections as a painter . . . an art student . . . during the 50s . .
. I concentrate only on what is directly stimulated by the smell . . . the
prevailing sense of turpentine. . ."From the sound element of Recall
Dennis Oppenheim's Recall consists of two elements. A video, tightly focused on
Oppenheim's lips, shows the artist talking about his art school years, how he
changed his practice, and how he specifically moved away from painting as he came to
see it as a redundant medium. In order to tell the story he is getting high off
turpentine, and you can hear him shifting in and out of sense with the narrative
veering between humour and melancholy. The second element is a long metal tray
placed in front of the monitor, filled with turpentine and ink reflecting back the
image and infecting the gallery space with the smell of turpentine. On entering MOT
you are taken right back to that all pervading heady smell that fills art schools
and studio complexes.
Oppenheim inhales the turpentine and "...like a drug, it induce[s] an alteration of
consciousness; as my senses are filled with this smell my memory slowly uncovers
images of a past region in which the smell prevailed, as I verbalise in a kind of
rambling stream of consciousness monologue. For me, that smell is associated with my
art school years, the late fifties" (from an interview with Willoughby Sharp,
Avalanche, December 1974). He talks about the difficulties of getting a painting
right, of overbearing art teachers, of smoking on fire escapes and of the
impossibilities of the medium itself. There is a timeless sense of the contemporary
in Oppenheim's monologue, these stories are not dissimilar from the ones all ex-art
students have recalled at some point - tales of being misunderstood, misdirected and
then, ultimately, of refuting the entire art school system in some way.
This live monologue transmits across time and place both in terms of the work itself
and the experiences and memories the smell evokes. On its initial showing in 1974,
in the New York independent space 112 Greene Street, the recording existed as a
stand-in for the absent artist. To look at Recall now makes time become duplicitous
and constantly present, as the atmospheric qualities of the gallery ties past
moments to the present. Doubled by its reflection in the liquid, the experience is
doubled again by the experience of entering MOT. Art making is far from a linear
progression - ideas appear and reappear, are layered up, refuted, contested and
questioned. Any artwork will be contingent on surrounding contexts that will shift
over time with each showing initiating new dialogues. There is something incredibly
contemporary about Recall and its dialogue with practice, anxiety, process, and its
healthy disrespect for preconceived notions as to what constitutes art. Recall
operates as a video, a sculpture, a painting and, more importantly, as a proposition
for thinking about artistic ideas and practices. In the gaps between conversations
and practices ideas are communicated: like layering up paint, this work stacks up
recollections and associations to question the very activity of being an artist.
To accompany the exhibition there will be a series of talks taking place at MOT and
the Whitechapel Art Gallery.
Talks series: MOT
Saturday 25th February 3pm......... Lisa Le Feuvre
Saturday 4th March 3pm................ Juan Cruz
Saturday 11th March 3pm.............. Jo Melvin
Saturday 25th March 3pm.............. Edgar Schmitz
All talks at MOT are free
Talks series: Whitechapel Art Gallery
Wednesday 1st March 7pm........... Dennis Oppenheim
Talks at the Whitechapel are £8 (£6.50 concessions), Book in person at the Whitechapel Art Gallery or by telephone on 020 7522 7888 or email tickets@whitechapel.org
Private View: Friday 17 February 2006, 6.30-9.00
MOT
8 Andrews Road (Unit 54/5th floor Regents Studios) - London