Albert Oehlen
(Born 1954)
Albert Oehlen was born in Krefeld, Germany in 1954. He attended the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg, where he studied under Sigmar Polke until 1981. During the early stages of his career, Oehlen’s artistic inclinations and thematic interests were diverse, ranging from music to painting. Neo-Expressionism became the prevailing aesthetic in the 1980s, inspiring him to combine abstract and figurative elements throughout his paintings. He established a close friendship with German artist Martin Kippenberger and dedicated himself completely to abstract painting. As early as a decade ago, Oehlen set up a studio in a tower of the city walls of Segovia, where he began to work on computer generated images that would become integral to his paintings. Oehlen’s spatially complex works use the collision of figuration and abstraction as a strong reminder of the multiple forces involved in the resurgence of painting at the latter part of the previous century.
Albert Oehlen has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Recent solo exhibitions of his work have been held in institutions such as the Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 2018, The Cleveland Museum of Art and Guggenheim Bilbao in 2016, The New Museum in 2015, Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, Italy and the Musée d' Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2009. He has also participated in exhibitions in major institutions such as the Musée Cantonal Des Beaux Arts in Lausanne, the Renaissance Society in Chicago and at the Kunsthalle in Basel. Oehlen's show at MOCA Miami in 2005 marked his first major solo exhibition at a museum in the United States. In 2009 Taschen published an oversized artist's monograph as part of its XL series that covers the entire scope of Oehlen's oeuvre. Albert Oehlen lives and works in Switzerland.
