Opening tonight at P·P·O·W Gallery in Chelsea.
Saw this work earlier today - hard to decipher from the photo but Oppenheimer cuts into the physical walls of the gallery to create these portals of glass and aluminum. One of them you can walk through and one is sealed by angular glass panes seated in deftly mitred trim. These relatively slight Matta-Clarke-esque interventions create funhouse spaces that are austere and elegant -- three-dimensional abstract compositions of available light, depending on where you're standing.
One also thinks of Dan Graham's rooms where you view other people viewing from behind transparent barricades. Yet design-wise the closest comparison I can think of is Australian artist Stephen Bram's gallery revamps, which I saw in Munich years ago. He is much more aggressive about building out additional walls to create his angled spaces. Oppenheimer only makes you think she is doing that much labor-intensive work. Her labor is thinking and observation to find the slightest pressure points in existing architecture to turn rooms inside out.