Sarah Oppenheimer

About

Buildings are time based. S-011110 and S-010100 change over time. Conceived as switches within architecture’s larger network of immaterial flow, they alter the duration of procession and the direction of vision, ricocheting sightlines across moving glass planes. Each of these works injects their specific durational change into the cyclical life of the inhabited building.

In S-011110 two beam and column dyads, made of glass and metal, divide the gallery visually and spatially. The beams are sensitive to a visitor’s touch. Contact with their surface animates and alters their position, shifting the division of interior space and the reflected view in the glass surface. Beams rotate along a 45-degree axis through a dampened and defined arc, supported by a pivoting arm inserted into the floor-to-ceiling columns. The eccentric axis of rotation creates a seemingly unpredictable path of motion. S-011110 transforms the immutable architecture of the gallery into a manipulable coordinate system.

In the smaller gallery, S-010100 compresses the expansive grid of columns and beams into the limits of a dynamic aperture. S-010100 is buried within the hollow of a partition wall. Vertical and horizontal glass volumes demarcate a void within this dividing wall. Rotation reshapes the contours of this void, and the view of the space beyond.

The works operate in tandem. Light, sight and habitation are shaped by the dynamic apparatus of the architectural switch, activated by the visitors’ motion. The interior envelope is a temporal orchestration of coordinates in flux.

Oppenheimer was born in Austin, Texas in 1972.  She studied at Yale University (MFA) and has had numerous projects in the USA, Europe and Asia. Recent solo exhibitions include Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio, USA; Perez Art Museum, Miami, USA; Mudam Luxembourg, Luxembourg; CCS Hessel Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, USA.  Oppenheimer lives and works in New York.