Excerpt from Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:

Dennis Oppenheim
Annual Rings, 1968

During the 1960s, a number of artists-including Oppenheim, Robert Smithson, and Walter De Maria-sought to liberate sculpture from the pedestals of the museum and made work that was inextricably bound to its site. In this piece, Oppenheim enlarged the patterns of the trees growth and, by shoveling pathways in the snow, transposed the annual rings to the frozen waterway that divides the United States and Canada and also divides their time zones. By juxtaposing man-made national and temporal boundaries, Oppenheim opened to question the relative values of the ordering systems by which we live.

Here, Oppenheim enlarged the patterns of the trees growth and, by shoveling pathways in the snow, transposed the annual rings to the frozen waterway that divides the United States and Canada as well as their time zones. By juxtaposing man-made national and temporal boundaries, Oppenheim opened to question the relative values of the ordering systems by which we live.

Related information from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:

Essay: Body/Landscape: Photography and the Reconfiguration of the Sculptural Object, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Dennis Oppenheim, Annual Rings, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York


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Excerpt from the Dennis Oppenheim Estate:

Dennis Oppenheim
Annual Rings, 1968

Over forty years ago, in 1969, documentation for the land art project Annual Rings was shown at John Gibson Gallery, New York. In addition to gallery shows at Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, and Galerie Francoise Lambert, Milan, works were included in "When Attitude Becomes Form" in Berne and "Earth Art" at Cornell University, Ithaca-two of nineteen group shows the artist participated in that year.

Continued, Dennis Oppenheim Estate


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Dennis Oppenheim
Annual Rings, 1968

Selected Exhibitions:

Dennis Oppenheim: Terrestrial Studio
Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY
May 14 - November 13, 2016


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Additional Information

Dennis Oppenheim: Selected Biographies on Art in Context

Dennis Oppenheim: Related Links on Art in Context


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Dennis Oppenheim, American, (1938-2011)
b. September 6, 1938, Electric City, WA
d. 2011


Art in Context - Projects:
Art in Context - Art for the Day: September 6