To rejuvenate the destroyed art objects, the artist used a special technique that she developed in a traditional darkroom. Oppenheim re-photographed the catalogue

pages and superimposed the negative and positive transparencies, allowing slight misalignment of both. A gray outline that emerged along the intersections delineated ghost-like shapes and added a pattern of crisscross lines inside of each object. Through this technical invention, Oppenheim did not merely document a modernist legacy, but suggestively entered into the process of making, adding her interpretation to American art history. In the video Yule Log WPIX (2009), Oppenheim goes further and lets the medium erase itself. The video revives a broadcast image of a fi replace that, until 1989, for twenty-eight years warmed American houses each Christmas Eve. In a desire to add an artistic value to this purely commercial piece, Oppenheim re-shot the video on 16mm film twentyeight times, each time losing one generation from the original. Toward the end of the six-minute loop, the image of burning logs breaks down into a flickering pattern.

Oppenheim shares archival concerns with Sarah Charlesworth and Martha Rosler. In this exhibition, however, the artist overinvests in the artifice of media and overlooks art’s expressive potential.