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Lot Essay
‘I want an art where you see how it’s made ... the traces of production’ (Albert Oehlen)
Over two metres in height, Conrad Veidt (2007) is a captivating example of Albert Oehlen’s 2000s practice, in which the German painter incorporated the debris of popular culture into his virtuosic works. The canvas bursts with a dazzling yet tightly-controlled exposition of paint, splitting the difference between order and chaos. There are pirouetting lines, surging curves and expressive fields, in a spectrum of colours including hot pink, vivid green and warm orange. Oehlen has used a variety of mark-making techniques—brushes, aerosol, drips—to create a complex overall composition. There are sections in metallic silver and sharp lines created by applying and removing masking tape. The translucent layers of paint give the whole a blurred quality. Fragments of text appear in the haze, with ‘Drogueria—Perfumeria’ written across the upper edge—the latter evokes the street signage of Spain, where Oehlen maintains a studio. Over the melee he has collaged an object of immense clarity and cultural permeance: the poster for the classic 1942 film Casablanca.
Conrad Veidt is named for the legendary German actor who played Casablanca’s villain Major Strasser. Famed for his early roles in German silent cinema, Veidt was the highest-paid cast member of the film, but he received only second billing. His name and face appear diminutive on the poster compared to the three leads. Oehlen spotlights his marginal presence in the work’s title. The artist may be also making a playful tilt towards international stereotypes about his native Germany: Veidt was a refugee who fled National Socialism with his Jewish wife, but in Casablanca he was typecast as a sadistic Nazi officer.
Oehlen has spent his career interrogating convention. Mentored by Sigmar Polke at the prestigious Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, he came to prominence in the 1980s as one of the ‘Hetzler boys’ centred around Max Hetzler’s gallery in Cologne. They took punkish jabs at the German art establishment while affirming the role of painting in an era dominated by Conceptualism. In the decades since Oehlen has mastered numerous modes of painting, challenging the medium’s limits. ‘Tradition, banal advertisements and cartoon characters’, writes Tom McGlynn, ‘vie for attention amidst expressionist brushwork and printmaking processes of layered “image plates”, tectonic in their signifying mobility. Each of these layers contain discursive dead ends and tangent incidents of paint/image/materiality that refused classical pictorial cohesion’ (T. McGlynn, ‘Albert Oehlen: Fn Paintings’, The Brooklyn Rail, November 2019). Conrad Veidt captures this exhilarating process in full flight.
Over two metres in height, Conrad Veidt (2007) is a captivating example of Albert Oehlen’s 2000s practice, in which the German painter incorporated the debris of popular culture into his virtuosic works. The canvas bursts with a dazzling yet tightly-controlled exposition of paint, splitting the difference between order and chaos. There are pirouetting lines, surging curves and expressive fields, in a spectrum of colours including hot pink, vivid green and warm orange. Oehlen has used a variety of mark-making techniques—brushes, aerosol, drips—to create a complex overall composition. There are sections in metallic silver and sharp lines created by applying and removing masking tape. The translucent layers of paint give the whole a blurred quality. Fragments of text appear in the haze, with ‘Drogueria—Perfumeria’ written across the upper edge—the latter evokes the street signage of Spain, where Oehlen maintains a studio. Over the melee he has collaged an object of immense clarity and cultural permeance: the poster for the classic 1942 film Casablanca.
Conrad Veidt is named for the legendary German actor who played Casablanca’s villain Major Strasser. Famed for his early roles in German silent cinema, Veidt was the highest-paid cast member of the film, but he received only second billing. His name and face appear diminutive on the poster compared to the three leads. Oehlen spotlights his marginal presence in the work’s title. The artist may be also making a playful tilt towards international stereotypes about his native Germany: Veidt was a refugee who fled National Socialism with his Jewish wife, but in Casablanca he was typecast as a sadistic Nazi officer.
Oehlen has spent his career interrogating convention. Mentored by Sigmar Polke at the prestigious Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, he came to prominence in the 1980s as one of the ‘Hetzler boys’ centred around Max Hetzler’s gallery in Cologne. They took punkish jabs at the German art establishment while affirming the role of painting in an era dominated by Conceptualism. In the decades since Oehlen has mastered numerous modes of painting, challenging the medium’s limits. ‘Tradition, banal advertisements and cartoon characters’, writes Tom McGlynn, ‘vie for attention amidst expressionist brushwork and printmaking processes of layered “image plates”, tectonic in their signifying mobility. Each of these layers contain discursive dead ends and tangent incidents of paint/image/materiality that refused classical pictorial cohesion’ (T. McGlynn, ‘Albert Oehlen: Fn Paintings’, The Brooklyn Rail, November 2019). Conrad Veidt captures this exhilarating process in full flight.