Faces of COPD
Limitless at Mind, Limitless at Heart: COPD Can't Stop Me!

Artist Dennis Oppenheim defines his art as “art-changing,” rather than “art-making.” “You aren’t thinking too much about being practical and you aren’t thinking too much even about the spectator or how you’ll survive or any of that,” he says in an interview with the COPD Digest. “You’re mainly interested in the deep, theoretical part. It was the pursuit of redefining what art was. And that’s why I did it. It wasn’t how it looked or anything like that. It was upsetting the boundaries of what constitutes artwork.”

Oppenheim, 71, has worked in the art world for about 40 years. He graduated from Stanford University in 1966 with an MFA, and moved to New York to teach art classes at local schools and colleges. Within a couple of years, Oppenheim found himself at the forefront of the conceptual art movement, creating largescale outdoor projects.

“I was doing what they call ‘land art’ well, which is [creating] sculptures directly on the land, actually digging into it or operating on the land,” Oppenheim says. “It was very direct and very radical. You couldn’t move this work, or sell it. You had to show it outside where it was. It was an extremely advanced type of thinking. And this is what they referred to as‘conceptual art’.” Oppenheim, who lives in Tribeca, NY, is also one of the millions of Americans who live with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). He says the condition neither defines him nor hinders his work.

“There are rather numerous physical tasks that are now compromised, so it does invade your life to the point where you are changed by it,” he says. “However, one can be extremely agile in making up for it and confronting it and finding ways to continue to operate and to function, regardless of what might be construed as advancing impediment.” Oppenheim smoked for over 30 years. He was diagnosed with COPD ten years ago, and says that through his support group and family, he is able to continue his artwork. “I can continue for a long time without admitting that my life has been severely compromised,” Oppenheim says. “I can go a long time because basically all I do is think anyway. My job as an artist is coming up with the concepts.”

Despite obvious challenges—including things like long flights—he has exhibited his work at the Tate Gallery in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris. Today, Oppenheim continues to produce his ground-breaking artwork. Considered a pioneer in the conceptual art movement, Oppenheim has created numerous large-scale outdoor projects nationwide, called land art or earthworks.

One such piece he did was in Wisconsin, where he constructed a 1,000-foot-long laboratory maze out of bales of hay.

“They were gigantic earth-bound configurations,” Oppenheim says. “I did things in wheat fields, cutting the wheat fields. I did things in the snow and on the boundary between Canada and the United States. This got a lot of attention internationally because it was so different than conventional art.” Since the art was so large and couldn’t be moved or sold, it was often short-lived. “It was very ephemeral,” Oppenheim says. “If it was made out of snow, it would only last a few hours. So it brought photography into the art world in a new way, called conceptual photography.”

Through his art, Oppenheim says he was able to make a decent living.

“Because this work was so radical and I was getting quite a bit of attention in the media, it became known to universities and university art departments around the country, and they would often want you to come and lecture,” he says. “And so for awhile, the support system was basically provided by universities all over [the United States].” In addition to lectures nationwide, Oppenheim was also given the opportunity to create works on the campuses, using their land and facilities.

“So I could not only get support financially, but I could construct a new artwork using their connections,” he says

Oppenheim also creates “public art,” which he defines as a specific classification of art, similar to architecture that exists in an urban environment. The type of work is permanent, and stays there as long as the building exists, but the opportunity to create the work has to be competed for.

“You must win them,” Oppenheim says. “You have to win them out of hundreds of other artists . . . and you have to get used to losing.”

Oppenheim says artists never retire, and he finds his work to be limitless, trespassing the boundaries one puts on himself when diagnosed with COPD.

“What I do is so cerebral, so much about sitting and thinking. I can go on forever,” Oppenheim says. “My brain would have to stop, and that’s the only thing that would stop my work. What you can do is determined [by] how you are affected by this condition.”

Oppenheim has exhibited hundreds of pieces of artwork all around the world, in almost every country, and has as many as 50 permanent outdoor sculptures. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and was recognized in 2007 for Lifetime Achievement at the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale.

Oppenheim says if the challenges become greater, the answer is to simply compensate for it. At the end of the day, he says, he still gets to do exactly what he wants to do. As for advice, Oppenheim says it’s all about being able to just “keep going.”

“It’s not as if you wake up in the morning and you’re just a radiant beacon ready to attract all kinds of ideas,” he says. “You keep working on it. Day after day you work on it, and you [will] develop something that is good. “Everybody is different. I mean, there are so many different perspectives that a person can harbor,” Oppenheim says. “There are those that lapse into despair and there are those that give up and feel the door is closing, but most people I think resist that at all costs. They are given a strong life of force that makes them stand up to these things. I think the majority of people have a strong urge to keep going. I think we’re born with it.”



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