Albert Oehlen: New Paintings

Author: Daniel Baumann

Number of Pages: 100

In a new series of huge four-part aluminum panel paintings, rendered in a simple, striking palette of red, black, and white, Oehlen creates tree-like forms as vehicles for a methodical deflation of content. The tree has been a recurring motif since the 1980s. Oehlen exuberantly demonstrates a tension between man- and machine-made imagery, while branch-like sprays mitigate any sense of pure abstraction. Open-ended, “unfinished” dialogues between binary oppositions are unsettling yet compelling: in any one work, the paint, the collaged pictures and texts, and patches of white canvas each occupy their own space, like a worktable clutter without a center. The appearance of the surfaces gives way to mesmerizing color-layers of graffiti-a testament to Oehlen’s ability to elevate common genres and materials through rigorous experimentation. Albert Oehlen was born in 1954 in Krefeld, Germany and studied at Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste, Hamburg. From 2000-09 he was a professor of painting at Kunstakademie Dusseldorf. His most recent solo exhibition was “Albert Oehlen: Malerei,” Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna (2013). Oehlen’s work was included in the 2013 Venice Biennale. His work is in museum collections around the world.