Sarah oppenheimer biography

A door behind me is ajar. The room around me modulates my voice, my gesture, and my visual field. My opening sentence shares the title of the sound work by Alvin Lucier. With each reiteration, the recording layers the ambient sound of the room, obscuring the original iteration and blurring the boundary between echo and architecture. Touch sets in motion a dynamic exhibition system.

Four instruments are interconnected: turning the input of one instrument alters the configuration of another. As visitors manually activate each instrument, a choreography of spatial change is set in motion. Lighting tracks slip between the vertical surfaces of sliding walls. Luminosity levels fluctuate while sightlines are interrupted and revealed.

The residue of touch lingers and communicates; we sense others shaping the space we inhabit. Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox. SO: Now more than ever, we must consider how spatial proximity and spatial agency are defined. What are the implications of expanding our institutional footprint across non-contiguous spaces?

What are the consequences of augmenting human gestures with digitally enhanced motorised action? Undulating lights and sliding walls remain in phase with human gesture. Each oscillation creates a temporal counterpoint, shaping passage and stretching the tempo of human touch. SO: I have been in dialogue with the Wellin's director, Tracy Adler, for years about the possibility of working together.

While on a site visit to the Wellin inI encountered an extraordinary mechanism embedded within the roller of an old printing press. The analogue technology of that older mechanism translated rotary motion into linear oscillation. Working in collaboration with the Yale University Engineering department, my studio began incorporating rotary-linear motion into architectural instruments.

We developed detailed digital models of the mechanical elements and constructed physical models to explore how human gesture could set linked objects in motion.

Sarah oppenheimer biography

Prototyping began on a small scale, allowing us to consider how touch shapes the position of handheld objects. As we gained fluency with the technical limitations and possibilities of this phased mechanism, the system expanded in scale to include architectural elements such as glass planes, steel tubes, and wood panels. Oppenheimer modifies areas of transition such as thresholds, hallways, windows and doors in order to reveal and reshape spatial hierarchies of observation and influence.

In early exhibitions at The Drawing Center and Queens MuseumOppenheimer explored the interdependence of spatial navigation and interior architecture. In D P. Edged with bands of dark, matte aluminum cladding, they recalled the drawn lines and shapes of hard-edge geometric abstraction. During a two-year residency at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Oppenheimer developed a human-powered apparatus, the biased-axis rotational frame mounting system, for which she received a U.

Viewers set the volumes in slow rotating motion around a diagonal axis. The movement initiated a sequence of unexpected sightlines, thresholds, pathways and choreographies between artwork, viewer and built environment. N Kunstmuseum Thun, featured a dynamic exhibition system of mechanically interconnected thresholds which when set in motion changed the position of one another.

Oppenheimer has been awarded fellowships from the John S. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. In the latter s, Oppenheimer reconfigured the boundaries between exhibition spaces, installing apertures that displaced views within and outside galleries e. In D P. The openings united, separated and altered the interconnected environments, offering shifting views and light conditions.

Edged sarah oppenheimer biography bands of dark, matte aluminum cladding, they recalled the drawn lines and shapes of hard-edge geometric abstraction. The New York Times' s Roberta Smith described D as "a new variation on the empty-gallery-as-art," which combined graphic punch and Caligari-esque Expressionism to torque space "in ways both apparent and mysterious.

It involved three precise, four-sided cutouts—in the ceiling of a second-floor gallery, in the wall of a third-floor gallery, and in the wall of an adjacent rotunda—that formed a Y-like shape opening into a volume embedded within the floors and walls. Inthe Mattress Factory commissioned Oppenheimer to create a site specific piece. The artwork, entitledopened a section of flooring in the 4th floor gallery space, giving the viewer a new perspective on the outer perimeter of the museum.

We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe. If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly. Forgot your password? Retrieve it.