ARTFOCUS TORONTO ONLINE ART MAGAZINE
A free publication - Editor: Pat Fleisher

[Photo: "Device to Root out Evil", 1997-Joseph Helman Gallery, New York/Edward Smith, Venice]

I first saw Dennis Oppenheim's upside down church sculpture, "Device to Root out Evil" at the Venice Biennale in l997 when he represented the USA at this prestigious worldwide art event.  I was in Europe as publisher of Artfocus Magazine (a predecessor to this online publication) to do a tour of all the summer art events

Here are a couple of articles written about the sculpture when it was first exhibited:

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Excerpt Reprinted from The New York Times, July 27, 1997:

A SLICE OF LONG ISLAND ART MAKES IT TO VENICE
By Phyllis Braff

One much-admired aspect of Long Island's 19th-century heritage has traveled to the current Venice Biennale in the form of architrectural inspiration, making the journey over a route that touches on sociology, politics, cultural committees and public art philosophy.

While exploring ideas for public sculpture two years ago, the artist Dennis Oppenheim, who divides his time between New York and Springs, started to plan a model for a tilting, inverted, 25-foot church that he eventually called ''Device to Root Out Evil.''

Dominant characteristics for the general design were inspired by the imposing, graceful structure he regularly passed, the classically proportioned white Presbyterian Church on the south side of East Hampton's Main Street, near the corner of David's Lane.

For the full article, go to:  &sec=&sphttp://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F01E6DB113BF934A15754C0A961958260on=

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Excerpt from Sculpture Magazine December 1997 Vol.16 No.10

DENNIS OPPENHEIM:  A MYSTERIOUS POINT OF ENTRY
Carolee Thea interviews Dennis Oppenheim in Venice

Dennis Oppenheim has been a pioneering artist ...... His new work addresses public space through his manipulation of familiar architectural icons. As usual, Oppenheim, shaman, reformer, showman, and trickster, wordlessly initiates a philosophical discourse with his audience.

The recent Oppenheim exhibition sponsored by the Venice Biennale was shown in Marghera, the port city of the island of Mestre, about 10 minutes from Venice via vaporetto. As visitors approach Marghera, an apparition like a part of New Jersey arises, crowded with processing bins and other modernist implements of a polluting industrial economy. Within this bleak landscape rises the temporary Teatro Fenice, a large tent-like structure replacing the burned-out opera house of Venice. The island's factories are virtually abandoned except for recycled spaces, including the Pilkington glass factory, which was filled with Oppenheim's works of the last 10 years, 40 of them. Alone in the rear courtyard was "Device to Root out Evil" (1997), a 25-foot, tilted, upside-down, New England-style church.

Carolee Thea: How has this context of Marghera, Venice, or the factory building, informed your work?

Dennis Oppenheim: For the past 30 years there have been occasions where the context has informed my work, if not literally created the foundation for it. A couple of years ago, I showed work in a World War II bunker in Munich, and the architectural setting almost demanded certain works and not others. In this case, I was asked to be a guinea pig, in an experimental gesture made between Germano Celant, the curator of the Biennale, and the present mayor of the city. Their objective was to bring art to the people living outside of Venice, in the community of Marghera. This culturally starved area would then compete with the overly culturally rich Venice. Not being Italian, I could not appreciate this gesture perhaps as much as the local inhabitants. But the general blueprint of turning abandoned industrial spaces into permanent exhibition facilities has a considerable historical precedent. You can imagine how difficult it is, however, to compete with Venice proper, a center of tremendous cultural life, compared to Marghera, an industrial wasteland.

Thea: "Device to Root out Evil", the church sculpture with its steeple thrust into the ground, is the only outdoor work. It is an interesting ploy to turn a familiar object upside-down, stimulating a viewer to reexamine preconceived notions of its nature and meaning. It conjures up associations of religious turmoil: 16th-century Italy, the Holocaust, war in the former Yugoslavia, or Christian fundamentalism in America. Have personal religious conceptions inspired the work?

Oppenheim: That piece, initially called Church, was proposed to the Public Art Fund in the city of New York to be built last year on Church Street, where I live. The director thought it was too controversial, and felt it would stimulate a lot of negative reaction from the Church and the religious population. I then changed the title to "Device to Root out Evil", to sidestep unwanted focus on ambient content. It's a very simple gesture that's made here, simply turning something upside-down. One is always looking for a basic gesture in sculpture, economy of gesture: it is the simplest, most direct means to a work. Turning something upside-down elicits a reversal of content and pointing a steeple into the ground directs it to hell as opposed to heaven.

For the full article go to:  http://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag97/oppenh/sm-oppen.shtml

By Pat Fleisher