Radiator Project for New York City (Brain)

Oppenheim, collaborating with E. Kienholz in his first artistic steps, creates works that are characterized by elements of Netondaism and which he subsequently destroys. His entire oeuvre is the expression of his personal reflection on the role of art and its limits, the artist and his communication with the public, in an attempt to demystify the mechanisms of Western life and the creation of consciousness. Thus, at the end of the 1960s, Oppenheim, considering the gallery spaces to be restrictive for the kind of art that can be exhibited there, engaged in Land Art, in areas even outside the centres of artistic life. In the 1970s, the need to create works outside of spatial constraints and familiar conventions of form led him to map the interior spaces of thought and concepts. What he is concerned with is the search for the intention behind the artistic act (mental-perceptual art), the cerebral impulses that direct the artist. The relationship between artist, artistic reflection and audience is clearly reflected in his works on the subject of the artist-puppet, a puppet whose movements are guided by the invisible threads of the market, the conventional perception of the role of the creator and the audience, the recipient of his art. Video installations, films, actions and environments become the medium for capturing this reflection. A dominant element in Oppenheim's entire artistic creation is always the attempt to reveal the act of art in its conception: where art comes from and through what processes it is produced.