Dennis Oppenheim

Dennis Oppenheim originally began his artwork through exploration of body art as a sculpture. In 1970, Oppenheim did a peice called, "parallel stress" where he suspended his body by the fingertips and toes between two walls. These walls were two broken down concrete casts on a pier between the bridges (Brooklyn and Manhattan) in New York. He stayed there suspended for ten minutes. He did the same position on his stomach in between two gravel hills with an empty pit below him for one hour. His body's arc was parallel which he documented with photos. His main focus was his Landy and Body Art. He has a serries of performance art surrounding the same ideas projecting his rebellion against the resilliance to physical stress and potential harm to body for exhibition. What he was exhibiting in these performance art peices spoke to the changes in his body that would occur by manipulating his spatial relationship in a structured world.