Albert Oehlen

I think if you can revise your own judgment, it’s the most beautiful thing that can happen to you.
—Albert Oehlen

Gagosian Athens is pleased to announce Works on Paper and a Sculpture, an exhibition of work by Albert Oehlen featuring recent drawings and collages and a new sculpture. The exhibition opens on June 9 and is part of a dynamic calendar of art events taking place in Greece this summer.

In the exhibition’s solitary sculpture, Oehlen refers to his cryptic Ömega Man motif, a genderless humanoid form prompted by the character of Dr. Robert Neville in the eponymous dystopian sci-fi action movie from 1971. A doomed survivor of a global pandemic, Neville symbolizes, in his desperate predicament, the runaway scientific development that led to humanity’s downfall; Oehlen’s deliberately crude but powerfully robust homage, rendered in cast aluminum, suggests a firm stance in the face of impending calamity.

While sculpture is a more recent area of interest for Oehlen, he remains committed to testing the boundaries of painting, the practice he has explored for more than forty years. In his work on paper, he continues to juxtapose and combine abstract, figurative, and collaged elements, revising and disrupting the histories and conventions of modernism with an unexpected nod to classical art. Shifting from careful planning to free improvisation, he unearths surprising new possibilities.