Flash Art
<< BACK TO THE HOME PAGE OF THIS SESSION

May - June




MEG WEBSTER
Christopher Hart Chambers
Review
TEN YEARS AFTER THE TURMOIL
Patricia Martín
FOCUS MEXICO — INTERVIEW
MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO
Joshua White
Review
DARK AND DEADPAN
Wendy Vogel
SPOTLIGHT
VANESSA SAFAVI
Andreas Schlaegel
BRAND NEW
Articles archive





ALBERT OEHLEN
Christopher Hart Chambers

REVIEW

Flash Art n.284 May – June 2012

 

 

GAGOSIAN - NEW YORK

 

The uniformed guard standing on the fifth floor of Gagosian’s multi-tiered Madison Avenue location — hosting an exhibition of recent works by Albert Oehlen, his first with the gallery — enthusiastically volunteered: “It’s not just paint. Every day I see something different!” He sees intimations of birds emerging at one moment from where it seemed more like a building before. Evocative and incipient imagery is a hallmark of Abstract Expressionism. The notion of an abstract painting as an object unto itself has never really caught on with most people. And Oehlen’s works exasperate our cloudgazing instincts to the extreme, eschewing any attempt to develop a mark into a definitively recognizable form, while his flamboyant brushwork (he also uses his hands, rags and what-have-you) explodes, caresses and gestures in a litany of insinuations.

 

Albert Oehlen, FM 53, 2008-11. Oil and paper on canvas, 220 x 190 cm. © Albert Oehlen. Courtesy Gagosian, New York / Los Angeles / London / Paris / Rome / Athens / Geneva / Hong Kong. Photo: Lothar Schnepf.

 

Oehlen enunciates his painterly prerogative over collaged photographic corporate advertising images on paper affixed to a dozen rather large canvases. Warhol and Basquiat collaborated along similar lines, juxtaposing Warhol’s silkscreened corporate motifs against Basquiat’s crash-andburn, savagely humorous, intuitive scrawls — except Basquiat was generally figurative and naive, while Oehlen handles paint much more elegantly and favors a stylized organic abstraction akin to Per Kirkeby. Large areas of the canvases are left blank white, which isolates the hazes and calligraphic strokes swiped and scumbled with bravado over the passages of digitally rendered “commercial art.” This graphic ploy teases one’s instinct that it must be a picture of something. The underlaid collage elements are cut and pasted in simple hard-edge geometric configurations. He assaults and berates them with oil paint to the point of being almost unintelligible. The irony is that after all the violence this action painter can throw at the business world’s logos, pithy slogans and mind numbing visual banalities, the final canvases are actually very attractive: replete with lovely swathes of muted tones, sharp accents of color and late-period De Kooning-esque panache.

 

 
 

Subscription for 6 issues of Flash Art International

Order a yearly subscription to Flash Art International as a gift.

You may write a short message sending your best wishes to a friend or relative who will receive six issues of the most up-to-date and extensive coverage of global contemporary art.

Buy it online

 
 
 


Giancarlo Politi Editore - via Carlo Farini, 68 - 20159 Milano - P.IVA 09429200158 - Tel. 02.6887341 - Fax 02.66801290 - info@flashartonline.com - Credits