Albert Oehlen - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, May 17, 2007 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin

  • Catalogue Essay

    Albert Oehlen’s paintings humorously critique with hallowed respect the predominant values of traditional painting. In Fibreglass Scroll, his sensitively treated surface adopts the ephemeral radiance of Abstract Expressionism, while all the while alluding to an aura of mysticism and spirituality.

    Devoid of color, Oehlen’s passionate brushwork becomes a vacuous gesture; his black and white palette relegates the sincerity of painting to the annals of history, calling to mind the grisaille technique employed by Renaissance and Mannerist masters. Stylized, flat shapes float above Oehlen’s painterly field, transforming his abstract composition to a Picasso-like animal, uncontrollably wild and powerful.

68

Fibreglass Scroll

2004
Oil on canvas.
106 1/4 x 86 5/8 in. (269.9 x 220 cm).

Estimate
$250,000 - 350,000 

Sold for $288,000

Contemporary Art Part I

17 May 2007
7pm New York