Albert
Oehlen, 55, enjoys a famous reputation. His paintings
are in the best auctions and the prestigious Taschen published
recently a luxury monograph to his glory. He said there
is "abstract painter living most inventive" today - which is no small
praise. It belongs to
the second generation of German painters after the war. The first was
that of very large, Baselitz, Polke and Richter. Polke is Professor
of Oehlen at Hamburg in the late 1970s. His biography
is full of this kind of details. 1972, he met Jörg Immendorff.
In Hamburg in
1977, he met Martin Kippenberger, with whom, a decade later, he moved
to Seville, the time of a year of painting together. However
Immendorff Kippenberger and have become historical figures, the first
for his vehement political painting, the other for pushing the eclectic
styles and references to its height - which makes him one of the heroes
of post-modernism. The latter
term is appropriate to Albert Oehlen, like his brother Markus, also a
painter. He accepted
without hesitation. His recent
paintings, he said, "similar to action painting and are not. They could
not have been done forty years ago. Why? Because they
do not understand without the memory of minimalism, which came after
the action painting. The reports
out of season, "is what interests me," he said, ruling out any
interpretation or psychological biography. A recurring
word in his remarks, "painting". "That's what
I love painting in oil, what I liked from the beginning." The idea, if
hackneyed in France, the "death of painting", the revolt: "This is
absolutely false. There are always new things to find." To prove his
exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris confronts
forty works of painting of the 1980s a series of 2008 Fingermalerei,
finger paints. It responds
to a "general idea": "Working with elements from the publicity." Where
appropriate, these images have been stuck on the white canvas or
transferred by printing. Oehlen and
then painted these images with his hands to be as close as possible to
the paint. "The first
time is crucial. In proportion as that in savagery and cowardice. If
it's a bad day, you can see it quickly." Alone,
without an assistant, he works well over three or four canvases
simultaneously, all large format. The presence
of posters reminiscent of early paintings of Rauschenberg's combines of
the 1950s. The digital
sketches evoke Twombly. So many
American references qu'Oehlen acknowledges having been important to
him. But he holds
back in the history of painting, less sensitive to the critical
significance of these artists. In this, it
is logical with himself and with his work, he considers "art for art". The
expression is correct, including its limitations. Oehlen plays
chromatic effects and heterogeneity with stylistic skill. He skillfully
combines parts photographic figurative and gestural choreography in
loops and scratches. The large
canvases in obviously increases the visual effectiveness. Remains a
painting that was intended as histories of painting and pictorial
processes retreats into a confined space. She can
seduce a moment, but is not meaningful or emotions.
"Albert
Oehlen Reality-abstract" at the Museum of Modern Art in the City of
Paris, 11 Avenue du President Wilson, Paris 16e. From Tuesday to Sunday
from 10 am to 6 pm. Until January 3, 2010
