“I’m not interested in the autonomy of the artist or of his signature style. My concern, my project, is to produce an autonomy of the painting…The question ‘abstract or not abstract’…is irrelevant to me”
– Albert OehlenIn Albert Oehlen’s Untitled, 1992, paint detonates across the canvas as a diverse explosion of color and mark. Vividly exemplifying the key tenets of Oehlen’s celebrated “post non-representational” paintings, which he executed between 1988 and 1997, the present work, in all its abstract excess, belies the studied formal complexity of the German painter’s style. Oehlen, known for pushing boundaries in his artistic practice, creates audacious works that challenge what painting can do.
Beyond Abstraction
Painted in 1992, Untitled was executed four years after Oehlen achieved his artistic breakthrough during his now legendary sojourn with partner-in-crime Martin Kippenberger to Spain. As Oehlen recalled of the secluded period living and working with Kippenberger in early 1988, “I wanted to start something new that I was dreaming of for a long time, which was abstract painting…In a way it was because I thought that art history went from figurative to abstract. And I should do the same. I should have the same development in my life as art history.”i
Sigmar Polke, Untitled, 1983, © ARS, NY. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY Emulating, but also transcending the progression of 20th century modernism from figuration to abstraction, Oehlen sardonically labeled his efforts “post-non-representational.” Walking in the conceptual footsteps of his mentor Sigmar Polke, Oehlen produced an unprecedented mashup of seemingly incompatible aesthetics, vocabularies, and materials–irreverently pulling apart the art historical legacy of such movements as Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, but also the then dominant tendency of Neo-Expressionism.
Critics have seen in Oehlen’s work from the early 1990s a nonchalance that masks a deep skepticism about the opportunities painting offers. But it is in the embrace and continual challenge of this anxiety that Oehlen’s works sing. The present work displays all the tormented experimentation of an artist grappling with painting as the cacophony of line and color at once situate the artist in, and separate him from, a dialogue with art history.
A Chorus of Gestures
It is the abolition of the difference between figurative and nonfigurative art that is at the core of Oehlen’s project. He achieves this through a process of negation; not in the sense of erasure or subtraction, but, as he defined, “the visible working through of inferences, misunderstandings, ideas to be criticized, and also your own mistakes.”ii Oehlen to this end puts forth, as Hamza Walker discerned “a chorus of contradictory gestures; … form against anti-form, the rhythm of pattern versus a meandering stroke, and a muddy mix of colors juxtaposed against vibrant pigment straight from the tube…Oehlen's paintings are always autonomous in so far as they have managed to eliminate through contradiction an allegiance to any particular style.”iii Within the crowded canvases, a multi-pixelated snapshot of today’s world appears, offering reflection to any viewer that transcends the categorization of abstract or not.
“It’s comparable to a classic jazz soloist. He runs riot within his harmony and stretches it as far as it can go.”
– Albert OehlenOehlen’s singular achievement is to fuse disparate elements into a powerful composition that seems frozen in a deafening and liberating crescendo of both discordant and harmonious form and color. His syncretic approach is not unlike that of a jazz musician riffing on a set of classics. Oehlen, who was associated with the Punk scene, uses a similar analogy when speaking of artistic freedom: “I see it this way: it’s the confluence of earnestness and ridiculousness that allows the artist to run riot. It’s comparable to a classic jazz soloist. He runs riot within his harmony and stretches it as far as it can go.”iv
Whilst seemingly announcing itself with the tempo of impromptu brushstrokes, the electrifying composition of Untitled is in fact the achievement of a deliberate methodology. Each drip, smudge and stroke that would otherwise be the product of improvisation is carefully painted, just as the composition is intentionally constructed to teeter at the edge of total dissolution. Untitled viscerally exemplifies how the uninhibited freedom and excess of Oehlen’s radical practice has reconfigured the possibilities of the medium of painting.
i Albert Oehlen, quoted in Glenn O’Brien, “Albert Oehlen,” Interview Magazine, May 2009, p. 106
ii Albert Oehlen, quoted in Diedrich Diederichsen, “The Rules of the Game," Artforum, November 1994, online
iii Albert Oehlen, quoted in Albert Oehlen: Home and Garden, exh. cat., New Museum, New York, 2015, p. 102
iv Hamza Walker, “The Good, The Bad, The Ugly,” The Renaissance Society, 1995, online
Provenance
Galerie Ascan Crone, Hamburg
Private Collection (acquired from the above)
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Property from a Distinguished European Collection
334
Untitled
signed and dated "A. Oehlen 92" on the reverse
oil and spray paint on canvas
33 7/8 x 58 3/4 in. (86 x 149.2 cm)
Executed in 1992.
Estimate
$400,000 - 600,000
Patrizia Koenig
Specialist, Head of Day Sale, Afternoon Session
+1 212 940 1279
pkoenig@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session
New York Auction 16 November 2022
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