Albert Oehlen

Lot Description Albert Oehlen (b. 1954) Music Always signed and dated 'A. Oehlen 94' (on the reverse) oil, enamel and acrylic on canvas 94½ x 78½ in. (240 x 199.3 cm.) Painted in 1994. Provenance Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Columbus, Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, Albert Oehlen and Christopher Williams: Oehlen Williams 95, January-April 1995. Los Angeles, Margo Leavin Gallery, Albert Oehlen, July-August 1995. Los Angeles, Margo Leavin Gallery, 25 Years: An Exhibition of Selected Works, September-October 1995. The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago, Albert Oehlen: Recent Paintings, November 1995-January 1996.

13 PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT EUROPEAN COLLECTION ALBERT OEHLEN TRAURIGKEIT , 2005 oil on canvas 82.5 x 102 in. (210 x 260 cm) ESTIMATE $300,000 - 500,000 PROVENANCE Galerie Max Hetztler, Berlin David Gill, London Contact Specialist Request Condtion Report Recieve Email alerts “ 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.” ALBERT OEHLEN The engagement of negative space, perimeters of color, and limitations of ... Read More... View catalogue Purchase catalogue Annual subscriptions

17 ALBERT OEHLEN Student II , 1997 oil on canvas 190 x 190 cm (74 3/4 x 74 3/4 in) Signed, titled and dated 'Student II, A. Oehlen 97' on the reverse. ESTIMATE £150,000 - 250,000 ‡ ♠ PROVENANCE Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin Private Collection, Geneva Contact Specialist Request Condtion Report Recieve Email alerts Albert Oehlen was born in 1954 in Krefeld, Germany and studied under Sigmar Polke in Hamburg. Linked to the Düsseldorf School and once a close friend of the late Martin Kippenberger, Oehlen combines a genuine love of painting and its beauty with a good measure of... Read More... View catalogue Purchase catalogue Annual subscriptions

Albert Oehlen (b. 1954) Kiefer's Brain Is Still Alive numbered '3/26' (lower left); signed and dated 'A. Oehlen 00' (lower right) etching image: 19 3/8 x 15in. (49.2 x 38.1cm.) sheet: 30 3/8 x 21 7/8in. (77 x 55.5cm.) Executed in 2000, this work is number three from an edition of twenty six 20 Christine Burgin Gallery, New York. Acquired from the above by the present owner. PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT EUROPEAN FAMILY COLLECTION

Lot Description Albert Oehlen (b. 1954) Untitled oil and lacquer on sewn printed canvases 94½ x 59 in. (240 x 150 cm.) Painted in 1993. Provenance Galerie Max Hetzler, Cologne Pre-Lot Text PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE GERMAN COLLECTOR Literature A. Oehlen, Albert Oehlen XL Monograph, Cologne, 2009, p. 225 (illustrated). Exhibited Nice, Villa Arson, Albert Oehlen, January-March 1994. View Lot Notes › The history of abstraction seemed to be finished... (A. Oehlen, "Bionic Painting, Albert Oehlen, Cologne, 2009, p. 257). Albert Oehlen's decision to practice painting was prescribed by a critical detachment from the medium. Having embarked upon his artistic career in the late 1970s, a time when painting was thought to be obsolete, Oehlen came to believe that painting could be re-invigorated by the act of painting itself. In a manner similar to Sigmar Polke, Oehlen chose to engage the history of modernist painting directly, taking on its rules and precepts, if only to dismantle them. Following this strategy, Oehlen's approach to the medium has, throughout his career, come to be as dutiful as it is irreverent. As Oehlen explains, "For me, painting is just one of many possible ways of making art. So I can romp around in it. And now that I'm having fun with it, I can take its postulates very seriously." (D. Diederichsen, "The Rules of the Game: Diedrich Diedrichsen Visits Albert Oehlen," Artforum, November 1994, p. 71). In the 1990s, Oehlen boldly raised the stakes of art-making, shifting his focus from the figurative to one of modernism's greatest legacies: abstract painting. Since then, his works have often resembled jumbled compendia of painting's styles and processes. In the present Untitled painting from 1993, Oehlen combines hard edge grids with gestural splashes, patterned imagery, swirls and streaks. Slow, ribbon-like lines commingle with dissonant smudges of paint. By presenting such a variety of diverse and often incompatible forms of visual information, Oehlen effectively dismantles the orthodoxies and restrictive policies that have historically dominated the field of abstract painting. Critic and curator Hamza Walker describes Oehlen's canvases as "representing a chorus of contradictory gestures; figuration is set against abstraction, 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" (Exh. Cat., Albert Oehlen: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, 1999).