the ömen

Oehlen’s works in this exhibition are focused on his cryptic Ömega Man motif, a genderless humanoid form inspired by the character of Dr. Robert Neville in the dystopian sci-fi action movie The Omega Man from 1971. As the doomed survivor of a global pandemic, Neville symbolizes the runaway scientific development that led to humanity’s downfall. In Ömega Man 6 and 7 (both 2021), the figure’s off-kilter shape emerges from the misalignment of two grids of color; in other paintings its mottled silhouette is positioned against a bright yellow ground, recalling the combination of stark line and intense hues in the artist’s tree paintings. It is also sometimes outlined in blue, red, and yellow, or rendered as a masked area of varied brushstrokes distinguishable only by its sharply differentiated boundaries.

Oehlen invited McCarthy to participate in the ömen in part to draw out a shared fascination with works that are “on the way to becoming something else,” and that may exist in multiple forms and versions. The exhibition also reveals other links, including that between Oehlen’s recent film with Oliver Hirschbiegel, The Painter (2021), and McCarthy’s monumental installation The King (2006–11). In the film, actor Ben Becker portrays Oehlen in the process of producing a new work, juxtaposing and confusing moments of frustration and fulfillment, authenticity and artifice. In McCarthy’s sculptural installation, an elevated platform is surrounded by airbrush paintings of images from popular magazines, produced by a hired illustrator. Also present, seated on a wooden throne, is a nude, bewigged, and partially dismembered silicone mannequin modeled after the artist.

Elsewhere in the exhibition, McCarthy’s Paula Jones, Melinda (2004–09) delves deeper and with similarly coruscating irony into pervasive misogyny by portraying the first woman to denounce Bill Clinton for sexual harassment, while his Henry Moore Foam (2004) pays homage to the titular modernist sculptor via a huge Styrofoam replica of a Moore-inspired work that McCarthy produced as a schoolboy. This weathered-looking figure—the product of an extended process of casting and recasting—echoes the part-abstracted forms in Oehlen’s paintings, underscoring again how both artists toy with and deconstruct the stubborn myth of white, male creative heroism.

An accompanying catalogue features essays by John Kelsey on Oehlen’s work and Hamza Walker on McCarthy’s.