Albert Oehlen’s monumental sculpture Ömega Man, 2023, emerges from the vast landscape of the Südeifel. Its simplified form and slightly raised steel bars, recessed into their concrete casting, evoke the lightness of a drawing. Here, the persistent importance of the line in Oehlen’s work becomes evident, appearing simultaneously curved and controlled. In this work, the artist uses elements which are both abstract and figurative – often under self-imposed constraints – to critically examine the history and conventions of contemporary art, all the while continuing to acknowledge the importance of classical models. Combining expressive gesture with a surrealist attitude, he defies the search for constant forms or meanings.
The figure of the genderless humanoid form, which Oehlen also employs elsewhere in his paintings, is inspired by the fictional character Dr. Robert Neville from Boris Sagal's 1971 film The Omega Man. In this dystopian tale, Dr. Neville is the survivor of a global pandemic. Massive yet fragile in its isolation, Oehlen’s Ömega Man similarly appears like a monument from the future. Omega, the last letter of the Greek alphabet, is here written with an umlaut, thereby referring to the artist’s own name.
