Albert Oehlen

The paintings of Albert Oehlen live by audacious strategies, by questioning the image and the rules of abstraction, and by an openness and beauty often reached through the unlikeliest of means. In this expansive monograph, we meet the full range of Oehlen’s artistic thoughts and approaches: paintings that integrate mirrors, paintings that are executed strictly in primary colors or only in gray, heavily pixelated paintings produced with the help of one of the first personal computers. We find collaged fragments of garish poster ads on canvases that transforming screaming slogans into abstract elements, charcoal drawings the size of a wall, finger paintings, and paintings in which black treelike silhouettes contort themselves into a lexicon of abstract forms. Throughout, Oehlen transforms the conceptual into the compositional, at once invigorating and challenging the viewer. Revising and updating TASCHEN’s previous Collector’s Edition, this revelatory survey explores Oehlen’s trajectory