Sarah Oppenheimer: C-010106

Featuring a playful public work of art designed to interrupt and alter our perception of space.

Few artists possess the ability to shape the ways we inhabit space as profoundly as Sarah Oppenheimer. Challenging the idea of sculptures as static objects, the artist animates inert materials, transforming them into vibrant apparatuses that interact with their surroundings. These manipulations defy the boundaries between sculpture and architecture, prompting us to reimagine our interactions with the spaces we navigate, inviting us to form new relationships with one another, and encouraging us to play.

Landmarks, the public art program of the University of Texas at Austin, is pleased to present Oppenheimer’s C-010106, a commission designed with precise structural calculations that interrupt space and complicate our perceptions. Occupying the surface of the Peyton Family Bridge at the Cockrell School of Engineering, C-010106 invites us to pause and wonder. Each view tempts us to engage with the work’s complex geometry and spatial arrangements, as it yields surprising vistas that heighten our awareness of others.

Andrée Bober is the founding director and curator of Landmarks, the public art program at the University of Texas at Austin. Her publications include The Collections: The University of Texas at Austin and Landmarks.