\Anna OppermannBeing an artist (Drawing from nature, for example linden blossom petals), 1969 – 198511.09. - 30.10.2010

In the seventies, Anna Oppermann developed a radical and controversial artistic language. Her intricate assemblages of drawings, photographs and objects grew into large scale overboarding spacial installations for which the artist coined the phrase „ensemble“.

The exhibition catalogue to documenta 6 concludes the following to Anna Oppermann’s work:
“Anna Oppermann’s ensembles embody and produce fields of association that emanate from a simple object. To begin with, as an almost arbitrary positing, there is a linden flower bract: the artist draws this leaf and thereby integrates her own physical position – a protruding knee, the jutting edge of a table – into the drawing. This drawing is then photographed, making the drawing and the photograph the first combinatorial level of the ensemble that determines the systematically induced associations: drawing, being a draughtsman, being an artist, art and society, etc. Earlier photographs are incorporated into the higher-level context of larger tableaus, only to revert to being details in later, even more extensive photographs. Oppermann’s horror vacui causes the drawn, photographed and quoted details to expand over many years into ‘object altars’.”