Albert Oehlen

About

Albert Oehlen is an influential contemporary painter working in an eclectic variety of techniques and imagery. Сycling ceaselessly between abstraction and realism, artist creates a contemporary interpretation of traditional painting models, where the medium and techniques join together to turn to a new independent genre.

Oehlen began to incorporate new technologies into his work—inkjet printers, computer-aided design programs and references to the pixelated lines of computer screens. Some of his self-imposed "rules" include limiting his palette and combining perambulating black lines with blended gradations (Tree Paintings), and utilizing erasure and layering to juxtapose bright and muddy colors (Elevator Paintings). Through expressionist brushwork and surrealist methodology he engages with the history of abstract painting, pushing the basic components of abstraction to new extremes.

Recent major exhibitions by Albert Oehlen took place in such institutions as Serpentine Gallery, London (2020), Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2018), Aïshti Foundation, Beirut (2018), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba (2017), The Cleveland Museum of Art (2016), Guggenheim Bilbao (2016), The New Museum, New York, (2015), Museo di Capodimonte, Naples (2009), Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2009) and MOCA, Miami (2005).