Concept of the Artist
Albert Oehlen’s paintings are neither beautiful nor seductive. Their self-consciously brutal surfaces seem to be corrupted from within, a perversion of the paintings they might have been.In Descending Hot Rays, Albert Oehlen’s monotone canvas occupies a space between representation and abstraction, his forms and textures converging not to create an illusion, but a suggestion of invention.
Traditional painterly expression is infused with a steely reference to technology. His work offers a raw confrontation with the deficiencies of visual language. Albert Oehlen doesn’t use paint to convey meaning, but rather to explore the possibilities of the medium’s ‘function’.
Albert Oehlen’s paintings humorously critique the hallowed respect and predominant values of traditional painting. In Fibreglass Scroll, his sensitively treated surface adopts the ephemeral radiance of Abstract Expressionism, alluding to an aura of mysticism and spirituality.
Devoid of colour, Albert Oehlen’s passionate brushwork becomes a hollow gesture; his black and white palette relegates the sincerity of painting to the annals of history. Stylised flat shapes float above Albert Oehlen’s painterly field, transforming his abstract composition to a Picasso-like animal, uncontrollably wild and dumb.
Oehlen re-contextualises painting as an expanded field. His most recent works are often produced through computer-generated design, incorporating collaged elements of photography and ink-jet printing as a means to explore new territories of representation and reception. DJ Techno combines pop emblems with Kandinsky-like expressionism to create an image with synaesthetic effect, alluding to sensations other than the visual.
Reference: http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/albert_oehlen.htm
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