WAKEFIELD.- As the leaves are falling from the trees, this autumn a forest full of curious foliage has sprung up at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.

The spectacular display, which includes Fixture Trees (2005) and Trees: From Alternative Landscape Components (2006), features artificial trees laden with a range of curious domestic artifacts including baths, toilets, sinks, dog kennels, dustbins, plastic chairs and parts of fences. Forming part of an exhibition of work by influential international artist Dennis Oppenheim (1938–2011) – at the Park from 21 November 2013 to 16 February 2014 – the installation investigates the relationship between natural and artificial environments.

Dennis Oppenheim: Alternative Landscape Components, is accompanied by an indoor display featuring the complete set of 100 related drawings by the artist from the same period. The drawings, produced by Oppenheim as proposals for alternative landscapes, were chosen by Lisa Le Feuvre, Head of Sculpture Studies at Henry Moore Institute, whilst researching at the Oppenheim Studio in New York.

Alongside these drawings is the first public showing of a 2006 interview between Oppenheim and artist-curator Willoughby Sharp (1936-2008), who described Alternative Landscape Components as ‘a proposal for a giant installation taking the place of nature’.

Born in 1938, American artist Dennis Oppenheim lived and worked in New York City from 1968 and also in Springs, East Hampton, from 1985. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California, in 1965, and a Masters of Fine Art from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, in 1966. Oppenheim received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1969, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in 1974 and 1982, and a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale.

The project has been planned to coincide with Dennis Oppenheim: Thought Collision Factories at the Henry Moore Institute, an exhibition exploring Oppenheim’s use of fireworks and flares, and is part of on-going collaborative work between Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle partners to consolidate Yorkshire’s reputation as an international centre for sculpture and contemporary art.

Oppenheim's works have been included regularly in international group exhibitions, at such venues as the Museum of Modern Art, Centre George Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Venice Biennale (1976, 1980 and 2001) and Documenta in Kassel (1972, 1977). Solo exhibitions have included the Tate Gallery, London (1972); the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1979); and the Whitney Museum of American Art (1983, 2003). Major retrospectives were presented at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1974); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (1976); Musée d'Art Contemporain in Montreal (1978); and P.S.1 in New York (1991).