Page 48 - Studio International - November 1973

the Galerie Behr in Stuttgart is accessibility or permanence. The
showing a selection uncommonly work was ephemeral and didn't have
refined and calm, of the 1953-73 that classical rigidity. I began to
works of the painter and art writer consider systems. Activities that
Klaus Jurgen-Fischer, who is also the were durational and required long
editor of the art magazine Das spans of time. Activities completely
Kunstwerk. At the opening of this outside the usual hermetic concern
show there was a witty and amusing with an exhibital form. All matter
speech by Robert Kudielka, who became possible art substances. All
organized the Robyn Denny forms of energy and conditions that
exhibition in Leverkusen and has were always present but never
undertaken the same task for the discernible as art substances became
Württembergische Kunstverein when discernible. To curb that catharsis I
Denny's pictures go on to Stuttgart. disciplined some of my activity to the
There is another retrospective, in the art context and literally to the
Spendhaus in Reutlingen, devoted galleries. I had this concomitant
to the 38-year-old Gunter concern with these very complicated
Schollkopf and showing the whole of external systems. Also, I'd get into a
his engraved work. Schollkopf, who piece that related to the gallery but
is currently working on a large, with this additional concern. The
twenty-sheet engraved map on the decompositions used what the
theme of 'Resistance' for the exhibition spaces had been made of
Proptlaen -Verlag publishing house, Dennis Oppenheim traditionally. It also questioned place.
made his name in South Interview Wishing Well All I put in were things that were
Germany with cycles like Ulysses and already there, like gypsum,
Modern Times. The finest surface of land and excavate it, you wallboard, wood. But I wanted to
retrospective at the moment is in with create a void. You are making a restrict that material from any
Berlin, where Werner Haftmann, with cavity to be filled with space. The architectonic imposition like the
great connoisseurship, is showing object aspect of something as catalyst that goes into making a wall
the work of Wols, who died young in Oppenheim subjective as a hole is always a hard or the catalyst that hardens
Paris in 1951. This exhibition really question. It was really not a concrete. The decomposition pieces
hits home, at any rate where the Jack Burnham recently referred to compromise of the site-marker idea. were made out of the material that they
watercolours are concerned. Wols's Dennis Oppenheim as a shaman : an The site-marker probably was more rested on. For instance, a pile on the
small watercolours, wrung from individual that reaches a crisis in his radical. It preempted the manual floor was what the floor was made of. I
the jaws of trouble and decline, life and then pushes himself toward process and established a conceptual saw the word decomposition as kind
emerge as the masterpieces of a loner, the roots of his prenatal being, and by legitimacy for claiming exteriorated of a deranged art term. Without the
redestined to a tragic end, who is now means of this intense process of self existing objects. My purpose in using catalyst, materials were controlled
widely recognized as the precursor recognition gains powers that have site-markers was to extend that by gravity. They fell into conic pools.
of informal painting. been denied him. Oppenheim's whole minimal syndrome one more LH : But these pieces were beautiful.
highly original procedures have dimension. Judd and LeWitt were at DO: One is. I had to reject the piece
The Kunsthalle in Baden-Baden has evolved into a self-analytic art. that time involved with having things in the Whitney that was stratified. I
gone in for a more detached approach. His most recent exhibition, held at the fabricated. The site-markers pointed wanted to use all the materials in the
Under the title Das kleine Bild (the Museum of Conceptual Art, San out that wasn't necessary. Whitney and arrange them in terms of
small picture) it tries to highlight the Francisco, consisted of four pieces. Minimal art made people look at volume. But it turned out to look like a
recent trend away from 'museum In a first room, a wishing well was minimal forms. The best minimal pulverized Stella. I set up an external
pictures'. Because of the many constructed into the floor. A forms were outside the gallery. We superstructure that governed how the
artists represented, this exhibition at conveyor belt dropped pennies into had all found that it wasn't necessary pieces would be placed. There was
the same time surveys the present the well while a tape of Oppenheim's for the artist to have a hand in the very little aesthetic decision making.
state of German painting. At the voice narrated a story concerning material. The site-markers were one Throwing that stuff around made it
Galerie Muller in Stuttgart the Scot stepping through concrete. A second extension, the wedge another. They quite beautiful, but it wasn't
Mark Boyle is currently enjoying room housed a mirrored ball which, as were trying to redefine the art convincing. Erratic gesture, just
great popular success which is it turned, caused spinning, oscillating condition in the gallery context. throwing material around is pretty
reflected also in sales. I find Boyle's light spots to circle the walls. A record LH : Do you see this idea as related to decorative.
objects very inconsequential, near the centre of the room spoke ready-mades ? LH : Do you see the decomposition
even when the processes by which about happiness. On two walls of a DO : Yes, except that the works I pieces, or some you have used
he arrives at these aesthetic third room, Oppenheim projected a claimed were all ground based. They yourself in, as being related to dying ?
consumables (which are in fact film of a hand hitting a wall. The were all forms that met the ground DO: I think someone mentioned that
nothing but pieces cut out of nature) films were not synchronized, causing level. There was an ambiguity as to the decomposition pieces were
achieve a somewhat strange and an echo of both the thud-like sound what was actually being claimed, an symbols of little murders. But I've
almost comic effect. What makes and the image. The fourth room activation of periphery. You have to never associated those kinds of
these Claims, which against all the showed a projected slide of a consider a hole in the ground things with the kinds of things I'm
earlier laws of gold-diggers he seeks whirlpool Oppenheim had drawn in conceptually as a microscopic doing now, that involve myself
with darts, into art is in fact only the the sky by means of a jet airplane. indentation that is relative to the directly. At that time, I didn't have any
fact that they hang vertically on gallery This interview with Lynn Hershman globe. That is why that kind of interest in personal idioms. I was far
walls — which, after all, are there for was taped on 22 September, the day activity, that gesture, was directly too concerned with larger systems.
that purpose. At all events there is after the exhibition opened. stifling the notion of relational form. It LH : Do you think your works are
great interest taken in the shores and was a small imperfection, an evolving in a psycho-analytic
cliffs of Scotland and the streets of LH : In 1967, you placed site-markers indentation of a spherical shape. I manner?
London. After I had written a detailed on a field, or a portion of a freeway. always saw these things as having a DO: Definitely. My work is now
critique for the Stuttgart Zeitung my You said that these were sculpture boundless periphery. It wasn't the introspective and seems to be
telephone rang repeatedly, and I and as good as anything you could cut, but where it ended. I use the term continuing in that direction. It
heard again and again the anxious make. But then you carved a wedge activation to describe the sculptural started out with formal concerns
questions, 'Is that really art ?' That in a mountain in Oakland. Can you procedure in that type of terrain about the use of energy, about the
seekers after truth, like Boyle, are the say why you went from the first idea because it wasn't done in a studio and possibility of rectifying material. I
borderline cases of art was, however, of pointing things out to creating therefore needed different guess the basic principle is the
understood. New crossings of that things ; from selecting to making ? descriptions. internalizing of energy that is usually
border would be important but none DO: Yes. It was all done in the LH : Do you think this kind of objectified in a work of art. This
are yet in view. summer of 67. There was a reductive selection is related to your energy is usually used to facilitate
Gunther Wirth reductive process, a subtractive decomposition pieces? or act as a tool in making a condition
(Translated from the German by procedure involved in the excavation DO: It became clear that what I did that is outside the artist. Most body
John Wheelright.) of the wedge. When you take a had nothing to do with oriented works sidestep that
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