Dennis Oppenheim: Explorations

by Germano Celant, Nick Kaye

One of the most adventurous American artists working today, Dennis Oppenheim has centered his artistic investigations on the dialogue between art and the self. An active innovator since the sixties, Oppenheim has pioneered both body art and so-called land art. Most famous for his whimsical, large-scale installation pieces, Oppenheim has worked with a variety of from performance and video art, to three dimensional moving machine pieces, and sculptural works employing unorthodox materials. This book is a comprehensive compendium of Oppenheim's art, his most complete monograph to date, and includes an interview with the artist. From a giant metallic upside-down church, to a group of human-sized hot dogs in sleeping bags gathered around a campfire, Oppenheim's work is alternately strange, humorous, and fascinating.

427 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 2001

About the author

Germano Celant (11 September 1940 – 29 April 2020) was an Italian art historian, critic, and curator who coined the term "Arte Povera" (poor art) in 1967.
Celant was the renowned curator of contemporary art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and artistic director at the Fondazione Prada in Milan.

On 29 April 2020, Celant died in Milan from COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. He was 79.