Installation view
Artwork © Albert Oehlen
Installation view
Artwork © Albert Oehlen
Installation view
Artwork © Albert Oehlen
Installation view
Artwork © Albert Oehlen
Installation view
Artwork © Albert Oehlen
Installation view
Artwork © Albert Oehlen
Installation view
Artwork © Albert Oehlen
Albert Oehlen
Untitled, 2019
Watercolor on canvas, 84 ¼ × 72 ¼ inches (214 × 183.5 cm)
© Albert Oehlen. Photo: Jeff McLane
Albert Oehlen
Untitled, 2019
Watercolor on canvas, 84 ¼ × 72 ¼ inches (214 × 183.5 cm)
© Albert Oehlen. Photo: Jeff McLane
Albert Oehlen
Untitled, 2019
Watercolor on canvas, 84 ¼ × 72 ¼ inches (214 × 183.5 cm)
© Albert Oehlen. Photo: Jeff McLane
These paintings are made in such a way that they accept order only very reluctantly. Eventually there is some form of order, but they strive against it.
—Albert Oehlen
Gagosian is pleased to present a series of new paintings in watercolor on canvas by Albert Oehlen, his first exhibition in Asia.
Oehlen approaches painting as a perceptual challenge, a puzzle set within the unpredictable arena of the picture plane. He often imposes specific rules or limitations on his work—keeping to a certain palette or beginning with a straight line—as a way to interrogate the infinite possibilities that the act of painting presents. By continuously flipping between chaos and control, he opens up new relationships between pictorial space, color, and gesture.
In these new paintings, Oehlen emphasizes the importance of spontaneity within his artistic method. Diverging from his recent works created with oil or lacquer on aluminum or the aluminum composite Dibond, Oehlen’s decision to use watercolor in this series marks a stylistic return to his hazy, blended, almost impressionistic oil paintings dating from 2016 and earlier.
Albert Oehlen in conversation with Max Dax.
On the occasion of Willem de Kooning: Endless Painting, curated by Cecilia Alemani and comprising paintings from 1944 through 1986 and two sculptures, the Quarterly revisits a conversation between Albert Oehlen and John Corbett from 2013. The pair reflect on de Kooning’s late work and its lasting influence on them.
The artist speaks with Mark Godfrey about his new paintings, touching on the works’ relationship to John Graham, the Rothko Chapel, and Leigh Bowery.
The Summer 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Carrie Mae Weems’s The Louvre (2006) on its cover.
Albert Oehlen speaks to Mark Godfrey about a recent group of abstract paintings, “academic” art, reversing habits, and questioning rules.
This film by Albert Oehlen, with music by Tim Berresheim, takes us inside the artist’s studio in Switzerland as he works on a new painting.
Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews the artist on the occasion of his recent exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries, London.
The artist met with art historian Christian Malycha to discuss his newest paintings.
The Fall 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a detail from Sinking (2019) by Nathaniel Mary Quinn on its cover.
At the Palazzo Grassi, Venice, a career-spanning exhibition of paintings by Albert Oehlen, entitled Cows by the Water, went on view in the spring of 2018. Caroline Bourgeois, the curator of the exhibition, discusses how the show was organized around the artist’s relationship to music.
