Dennis Oppenheim

American conceptual, body, and earth artist (6 September 1938 – 21 January 2011) who cultivated an innovative practice across five decades. As an early pioneer of land art, his ephemeral earthworks included Annual Rings (1968), rings carved in the snow on the US-Canada border, and Gallery Transplant (1969). His body art, developed from 1968 alongside Vito Acconci, included Reading Position for Second Degree Burn (1970). From the early 1980s his machine pieces, complex space-filling devices, explored psychological and physical limit. He was pivotal to the foundational moments of performance, conceptual, and earth art as distinct movements.