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Numbers A New Work by Kristin Oppenheim
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
August 17–November 24, 2002

Over the past decade, Kristin Oppenheim has been exploring
the means by which we recall, revive, and share childhood
memories and the emotions associated with them. Many of
these memories and emotions are quite difficult to articulate, as
they were acquired in a pre-linguistic state of being, or were
too crude/unformed to be expressed in words. Oppenheim
attempts to construct sculptural, experiential environments
that preserve the rawness of those feelings or serve to trigger
them in viewers’ minds. Though the artist’s investigation is
by nature autobiographical and introspective, the universal
character of the memories and emotions she mines points to a
common terrain of shared experience. In many cases, an adult
can be stimulated to access or recover long-dormant childhood
above: After Dark My Sweet, 2000; Courtesy of the artist and 303 Gallery, New York.
cover: Numbers (video still), 2002; Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
memories by witnessing the experiences of a youth in his or her
care; Oppenheim’s installation Numbers, with its close-ups of
children’s hands playing a clapping game of the same name,
suggests that artistic evocations of childhood can perform a
similar function.
Oppenheim’s art is characterized by its performative
quality: early in her career, she often presented sound works in
white rooms that were empty save for the physical presence of
the audio equipment itself. She sang fragments of popular songs
a cappella, or read poetry that she had written or found, and
then presented recordings of them in these minimal settings.
Her installations eventually came to incorporate theater lighting,
as if to underscore the sense of a performance, yet one from
which the artist/performer is physically removed. The naked
voice best incarnates this strange tension between absence and
presence, and it acts as a link between past and present, constructing
a space of both personal memory and collective experience.
Oppenheim carefully integrates the architectural
setting into her artworks in order to maximize the impact of
the audio component and foster the intimacy required to
share the primal feelings in which she is interested. For a
2000 installation entitled The Eyes I Remember, Oppenheim
literally sculpted the space, transforming the central part of a
gallery 1 into a nearly ethereal maze of white scrim. While
navigating the maze, the viewer was compelled to slow down
in order to concentrate on a recording of whispered poetry.
The maze also served as a passageway to an exhibition of
Oppenheim’s photographs, which depicted outstretched arms,
1. The Eyes I Remember was on view at the 303 Gallery, New York, February–March 2000.

their open hands reaching downward. The artist’s interest in
manipulating architectural elements and in the pictorial representation
of reaching arms can be found in Numbers, a new
work commissioned by SFMOMA. A single video of anonymous
children’s hands is projected out-of-sync onto five different
surfaces to overwhelming effect. The whispering featured in
The Eyes I Remember, however, has disappeared, replaced with
a disquieting soundtrack of gusting winds and ringing bells.
Though the representation of a traditional childhood game
initially may seem allegorical and idyllic, the unsettling aural
element of this work and its self-conscious staging in the
gallery also denote a moment of angst, a flash of memory that
may well be closer to a nightmare. This disjunctive effect is
heightened by the unsynchronized, multiple projection of the
video, which causes the rhythm of the hands to appear manipulated,
disjointed, and inhuman, as if mechanically rendered.
Aside from the immediate formal references to
Minimalism, one can also trace a relationship between Kristin
Oppenheim’s work and Surrealism. Her quest for a pared-down
exploration of the universal unconscious echoes experiments
with automatic writing carried out by poets and writers such
as André Breton and René Char. Similarly, the cheery yet sanitized
skyscapes depicted in Numbers evoke the phantasmagoric
landscapes of surrealist painters such as Yves Tanguy and
René Magritte.
Benjamin Weil
Curator of Media Arts, SFMOMA
The artist would like to extend special thanks to Erin Carden and Rose Allen, performers; Kimberly Hassett,
video producer; Tom Carden, sound producer; and Steve Dye, installation consultant.
The Eyes I Remember (installation view), 2000; Courtesy of the artist and 303 Gallery, New York.

Kristin Oppenheim
Born 1959, Honolulu, Hawaii
Lives and works in New York
Numbers, 2002
Five-channel video projection with sound
Dimensions variable
Media: Digital Versatile Disk (DVD)
Equipment: Five DVD players, five projectors,
speakers, synchronizer
Commissioned by the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art
Education
1989 MFA, Hunter College, New York
1984 BA, San Francisco State University
Selected Individual Exhibitions
2002 Black Sabbath, 303 Gallery, New York
2000 The Eyes I Remember, 303 Gallery, New York
Hey Joe, Oboro, Montreal, Canada
1999 Scat, Greengrassi, London
1997 Blackbird, Blackbird, The Jewish Museum,
New York
1996 Hey Joe, 303 Gallery, New York
Slip, Centre Genevois de Gravure
Contemporaine, Geneva
1995 Sally-Go-Round, Studio Guenzani, Milan
The Spider and I, University at Buffalo Art
Gallery
1994 Hush, Villa Arson, Nice, France
Sail On Sailor, 303 Gallery, New York
1993 Shiver, Studio Guenzani, Milan
Selected Group Exhibitions
2001 Intime Nature, Parc Saint Léger, Centre
d’Art Contemporain, Pougues-les-Eaux,
France
Brooklyn!, Palm Beach Institute of
Contemporary Art, Lake Worth, Florida
We Aim To Please… The Flatterers, FLAT,
New York
The Big Id, James Cohan Gallery, New York
Now Playing: Audio in Art, Susan Inglett,
New York
2000 Little Angels, Houldsworth Fine Art, London
Presumed Innocent, Musée d’Art
Contemporain de Bordeaux
Innuendo, Dee Glasgoe, New York
1999 The American Century: Art & Culture
1900–2000, Whitney Museum of American
Art, New York
Searchlight: Consciousness at the Millennium,
CCAC Institute, San Francisco
The Greatest Show on Earth, University of
Texas at El Paso
Le temps libre, Ville de Deauville, Deauville,
France
Editions, Centre Genevois de Gravure
Contemporaine, Geneva
Voices, Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing, France; traveled
to Witte de With, Rotterdam, The Netherlands;
Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain
1998 Visions, St. Trophime Rez de Chaussée,
Arles, France
1997 New York, Galleri F15, Moss, Norway
You Are Here, Royal College of Art, London
Young and Restless, The Museum of Modern
Art, New York
Dialogues: Kristin Oppenheim / Todd Norsten,
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
1996 Kristin Oppenheim and Herman Maier
Neustadt, Aktionsforum Praterinsel, Munich
AutoReverse 2, Le Magasin, Grenoble, France
Divers complements d’hivers, Musée d’Art
Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva
29’-0”/East, New York Kunshalle, New York;
traveled to Kunstraum Vienna
Extensions, “La Caixa,” Barcelona, Spain
Tone, The Kitchen, New York
1995 Threshold, Fundacao de Serralves, Porto,
Portugal
Infrasound, Hamburger Woche der
Bildenden Kunst, Hamburg
Murs de son, Villa Arson, Nice, France
On Board, Venice Biennale
1994 Uncertain Identity, Galerie Analix, Geneva
1993 Utopia del Possible, Teatro Carlo Felice,
Genoa, Italy
Cadavre Exquis, The Drawing Center, New
York
More Than Zero, Le Magasin, Centre d’Art
Contemporain, Grenoble, France
Les Images du Plaisir, FRAC des Pays de la
Loire, Chateau Gontier, Chapelle du
Geneteil, Mayenne, France; traveled to
Palais des Congres et de la Culture, Le
Mans, France
1992 Kristin Oppenheim, Andre Strong, AC Project
Room, New York
Under Thirty, Galerie Metropol, Vienna
Writings on the Wall, 303 Gallery, New York
Water Bar, 303 Gallery, New York
1991 One Leading to Another, 303 Gallery, New
York
Encounters with Diversity, PS 1, New York
BACA, B.A.C.A. Gallery, New York
Home for June, Home for Contemporary
Theatre and Art, New York
1990 Reconnaissance, Simon Watson Gallery,
New York
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 www.sfmoma.org