Dennis Oppenheim
The Denver Office of Cultural Affairs awarded the largest of five commissions for the new Denver Justice Center to Dennis Oppenheim for a work to anchor the central plaza and include the theme of justice.
At 33 feet, Light Chamber is of architectural scale. It is to be seen and experienced from within. A variety of petal forms become curved walls as one enters and walks through the translucent, light infused curved walls to the center of the calalilly form.
This complex, based on a series of unfolding flower petals, forms an enclosure Oppenheim likens to a judge’s chamber. In Light Chamber however, the dark somber environment normally associated with a judge’s room instead opens up to the sky through vaulted translucent walls.
“It’s sort of a three-dimensional structural facsimile of what could be construed as the mental process where avenues created by the petals mimic in metaphorical ways, the nooks and crannies of decision-making which has serious results within the court system.”
The work is meant to address the courtroom’s judicial members and to bestow upon all viewers sensations of uplift and transcendence.
In this work the artist continues the close relationship to the site he first explored in the late sixties with works such as Annual Rings, which could not occur anywhere other than the boundary line site. His public art projects penetrate the mystique of a place and establish in the work itself, deeply routed content from the site.
