ALBERT OEHLEN

The Painter, a film by Albert Oehlen, Oliver Hirschbiegel and Ben Becker

© 2020 by Albert Oehlen, Oliver Hirschbiegel and Ben Becker
© 2020 by Albert Oehlen, Oliver Hirschbiegel and Ben Becker

Under the direction of Oliver Hirschbiegel, actor Ben Becker on screen impersonates the contemporary painter Albert Oehlen and re-creates a painting that Oehlen himself and in parallel is creating step by step in the background, with the actor improvising the process in front of the camera. The finished on-screen painting is an original “Oehlen” on which the artist himself never laid hands. The off screen blueprint painting was destroyed after principal shooting had finished.

Originally planned to be a performative statement the projects developed into a fully fledged feature film of 92 minutes, crossing formal boundaries and questioning the meaning of the creative process and the struggle for authenticity on various levels.

The Painter follows the artist / actor as he is struggling and suffering along this process with us watching in joyful despair and what might happen next until the white canvas has turned into a finished painting.

The outcome is a one-man rollercoaster that appears to be a documentary but in fact is a staged and guided improvisation with the “real” process happening behind the camera. The Painter is a constant flow of the artist’s journey with elements of farce and comedy topped with emotional moments of truth...in front of and behind the camera and leaving it up to us to decide what is real and/or authentic.

Watch the trailer here.


Picture Tree International

© 2020 by Albert Oehlen, Oliver Hirschbiegel and Ben Becker
© 2020 by Albert Oehlen, Oliver Hirschbiegel and Ben Becker

Additional:

MARK GROTJAHN, ALBERT OEHLEN, ADAM PENDLETON, RUDOLF STINGEL, CHRISTOPHER WOOL et al.

A Dark Hymn: Highlights from the Hill Collection (group show)
Hill Art Foundation, New York
1 March – 13 April 2024

Installation view: A Dark Hymn: Highlights from the Hill Collection, Hill Art Foundation, New York, photo: Matthew Merrmann, © Hill Art Foundation
Installation view: A Dark Hymn: Highlights from the Hill Collection, Hill Art Foundation, New York, photo: Matthew Merrmann, © Hill Art Foundation

Works by Mark Grotjahn, Albert Oehlen, Adam Pendleton, Rudolf Stingel and Christopher Wool are on view in A Dark Hymn: Highlights from the Hill Collection. Celebrating the five-year anniversary of the Hill Art Foundation, the exhibition examines the collection through the lens of Valentin Bousch’s 16th-century stained-glass window, The Creation and the Expulsion from Paradise, which is permanently installed in the Foundation’s Chelsea building. The exhibition places the Bousch window in conversation with other significant works in the collection, spanning from the Renaissance through to the contemporary moment.

Hill Art Foundation

Installation view: A Dark Hymn: Highlights from the Hill Collection, Hill Art Foundation, New York, photo: Matthew Merrmann, © Hill Art Foundation
Installation view: A Dark Hymn: Highlights from the Hill Collection, Hill Art Foundation, New York, photo: Matthew Merrmann, © Hill Art Foundation

ALBERT OEHLEN

Albert Oehlen (solo show)
Friedrichs Foundation, Weidingen
27 August – 17 December 2023

Installation view: Albert Oehlen, Friedrichs Foundation, Weidingen, 2023, photo: Günzel | Rademacher
Installation view: Albert Oehlen, Friedrichs Foundation, Weidingen, 2023, photo: Günzel | Rademacher

When Albert Oehlen set out as a painter in the late 1970s, it was a time out of joint. Given German history, terrorism, 'No Future,' and Nineteen-Eighty-Four as well as the permanent threat of all-out nuclear war, painting could not pretend that the world was safe and sound. As the world shattered, so did painting. As all symbols, signs, and means were damaged and devoid of meaning, he unmasked painting in all its dubiousness. How is one to tell authentic gesture from blunt reproduction, genuine emotion from a disillusioned readymade copy? Oehlen accepts the shattering and transforms it into the basis of his painting. He invents an overtly fragmented image, which is as disoriented as the reality, in which it partakes. Traces, stimuli, and after-images of reality flash stroboscopically across his canvases. It is through this attitude that he has achieved an exceptional degree of painterly liberty, With each new image, he updates and renews the possibilities and impossibilities of painting, thereby granting an appropriate form to a diffuse reality. 

For the first time, Albert Oehlen has created an expansive all-over installation, spanning the entirety of the Friedrichs Foundation’s exhibition hall, into which 12 paintings have been playfully integrated.

Friedrichs Foundation

Installation view: Albert Oehlen, Friedrichs Foundation, Weidingen, 2023, photo: Günzel | Rademacher
Installation view: Albert Oehlen, Friedrichs Foundation, Weidingen, 2023, photo: Günzel | Rademacher

ALBERT OEHLEN

Ömega Man, 2023 (outdoor sculpture) 
Stiftung zur Förderung Zeitgenössischer Kunst in Weidingen / Rodenhof
On view from 15 July 2023

Albert Oehlen, Ömega Man, 2023, photo: def image
Albert Oehlen, Ömega Man, 2023, photo: def image

Albert Oehlen’s monumental sculpture Ömega Man, 2023, is now on view to the public in Weidingen, where it 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 to critically examine the history and conventions of contemporary art, all the while continuing to acknowledge the importance of classical models. Massive yet fragile in its isolation, Oehlen's Ömega Man 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. 

Stiftung zur Förderung Zeitgenössischer Kunst in Weidingen

Albert Oehlen, Ömega Man, 2023, photo: def image
Albert Oehlen, Ömega Man, 2023, photo: def image

MARK GROTJAHN, ALBERT OEHLEN, ADAM PENDLETON, RUDOLF STINGEL, CHRISTOPHER WOOL, ALBERT OEHLEN, ADAM PENDLETON

Oehlen, Pendleton, Pope.L, Sillman (publication)
Published by Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris | London / Holzwarth Publications, 2023

Photo: def image
Photo: def image

The new catalogue published on the occasion of the group exhibition Oehlen, Pendleton, Pope.L, Sillman, on view at Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin from 4 November 2021 until 29 January 2022, is now available for purchase. Alongside installation views and high-resolution images, the publication includes a conversation between Amy Sillman, Adam Pendleton, and Isabelle Graw.

Learn more

Photo: def image
Photo: def image