Sarah Oppenheimer
The US artist Sarah Oppenheimer (b. 1972, Austin) sees her interventions as catalysts for sharpening awareness of the spaces in which they take place. The works she has made since 2002 are always painstakingly prepared and executed with extreme precision. Oppenheimer is especially interested in the different conditions of the exhibition space, which are determined by architectural conventions, industrial norms and ideological tenets, but that to a large extent remain unnoticed. After a detailed analysis of the location in question based on a number of predetermined parameters, in which, for example, the architecture, the prevailing lighting conditions and visitor behaviour are examined, the artistic intervention is undertaken, which in most cases first presents itself as a negative space, as a “hole”. The contingencies of the spatial matrix, which Oppenheimer calls “the array”, are visibly transformed through the manipulation of architectural boundaries.