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"Developing in the area of tension between figurative and abstract art, Albert Oehlen's work is subject to continual change. In his paintings, collages and drawings he demystifies art, rendering his artistic methodology transparent. His painting is the expression of his thoughts on art as a medium, a criticism of its veneration and an analysis of its artistic and social capabilities." (U. Grosenick and B. Riemschneider, eds., Art at the Turn of the Millenium, London, 200, p. 362).
Albert Oehlen's decision to practice painting was prescribed by a critical detachment from the medium. Having embarked upon his artistic career in the late 1970s, a time when painting was thought to be obsolete, Oehlen came to believe that painting could be re-invigorated by the act of painting itself. In a manner similar to Sigmar Polke, his teacher while in Hamburg, Oehlen chose to engage the history of modernist painting directly, taking on its rules and precepts, if only to dismantle them. Following this strategy, Oehlen's approach to the medium has, throughout his career, come to be as dutiful as it is irreverent. As Oehlen explains, "For me, painting is just one of many possible ways of making art. So I can romp around in it. And now that I'm having fun with it, I can take its postulates very seriously." (D. Diederichsen, "The Rules of the Game: Diedrich Diedrichsen Visits Albert Oehlen," Artforum November 1994, p. 71).
Like his friend and collaborator, Martin Kippenberger, Oehlen's work from the early 1980s frequently targeted the heroic posturing and exaggerated self-importance that became the hallmarks of the neo-expressionist painting that was then rising to prominence on both sides of the Atlantic. These early figurative works were identified as belonging to the "New Wild Paintings." In works such as Grazie, 1982, Oehlen depicts subjects that only hint at grand religious, social or historical themes, failing--often comically--to live up to their customary magnitude. Rapidly painted in a muddied palate of grays, browns and oranges, the facture of Grazie belies the elegance suggested by the work's title. Likewise, the fragmented body and ambiguous expression of the figure give the image a mood that lies uneasily between spiritual ecstasy and physical despair, confounding many modernist painters' claims to social or mystical transcendence through art.
In the 1990s, Oehlen boldly raised the stakes of his project, shifting his focus to one of modernism's greatest legacies: abstract painting. Since then, his works have often resembled a jumbled compendia of painting's styles and processes. In Born to Be Late, 2001, Oehlen combines hard edge grids with gestural splashes, swirls and streaks. Slow, ribbon-like lines commingle with dissonant smudges of paint. Complicating things further, Oehlen combines computer-generated imagery, "painted" with a mouse and applied to the canvas with an inkjet printer, with more traditional painting media like oil and acrylic. By presenting such a variety of diverse and often incompatible forms of visual information on a single canvas, Oehlen effectively dismantles the orthodoxies and restrictive policies that have historically dominated the field of abstract painting.
ALBERT OEHLEN (b. 1954)
Born to be late
Details
ALBERT OEHLEN (b. 1954)
Born to be late
signed, titled and dated 'A. Oehlen 01 Born to be late' (on the reverse)
inkjet ink with oil and enamel on canvas
130 x 134 in. (330 x 340 cm.)
Painted in 2001.
Born to be late
signed, titled and dated 'A. Oehlen 01 Born to be late' (on the reverse)
inkjet ink with oil and enamel on canvas
130 x 134 in. (330 x 340 cm.)
Painted in 2001.
Provenance
Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin
Galeria Alfonso Artiaco, Madrid
Galeria Alfonso Artiaco, Madrid
Exhibited
Lausanne, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts; Salamanca, Domus Artium 2002; Kunsthalle Nurnberg, Albert Oehlen: Peintures/Malerei, 1980-2004: Self Portrait at 50 million times the speed of light, June 2004-June 2005, p. 116 (illustrated).