BY STEPHANIE BUHMANN | This is the first New York museum exhibition of Albert Oehlen, a pioneering German painter who can be linked to several of the best known post-war artists of that country. Having studied with Sigmar Polke and associated closely with Jörg Immendorff in the 1970s, he also collaborated with Martin Kippenberger in the 1980s.
Born in 1954, Oehlen has focused on the exploration of painting, its many forms, structures and experiences. Like Gerhard Richter, he has gone back and forth between figuration and abstraction. In fact, he continuously sets up different rules for himself, embracing a process that is rooted in constant change and various styles.
Portraiture, collage, and gestural abstraction are among the many different genres Oehlen has covered — and his democratic oeuvre entails haunting interiors, mutating self-portraits, archaic and digital landscapes, cryptic fragments of language and abstractions, among others.
Rather than adhering to a chronological timeline, the exhibition showcases Oehlen’s diversity by looking at the contrasts between interior and exterior; nature and culture; irony and sincerity. It includes a selection of the artist’s early self-portraits, his “post-non-objective” canvases, his computer paintings and switch paintings from the 1990s, and more recent works fusing appropriated advertising signage and abstract marks. Overall, it succeeds in revealing Oehlen’s impressive commitment to the expansion of the language of painting in unexpected ways.
“Albert Oehlen: Home and Garden” is on view through Sept. 13 at the New Museum (235 Bowery btw. Stanton & Rivington Sts.). Hours: Wed.–Sun. 11 a.m.–6 p.m. Extended Thurs. hours, until 9 p.m. Tickets: $16 for adults, $14 for ages 65+, $10 for students with valid ID, free for ages 18 and under. Pay-what-you-wish (suggested donation, $2) Thurs. from 7–9 p.m. Call 212-219-1222 or visit newmuseum.org.
