ALBERT OEHLEN

–Albert Oehlen

Gagosian is pleased to present a series of new paintings in watercolour on canvas by Albert Oehlen, his first exhibition in Asia.

Oehlen approaches painting as a perceptual challenge, a puzzle set within the unpredictable arena of the picture plane. He often imposes specific rules or limitations on his work-keeping to a certain palette or beginning with a straight line-as a way to interrogate the infinite possibilities that the act of painting presents. By continuously flipping between chaos and control, he opens up new relationships between pictorial space, colour, and gesture.

In these new paintings, Oehlen emphasises the importance of spontaneity within his artistic method. Diverging from his recent works created with oil or lacquer on aluminium or the aluminium composite Dibond, Oehlen’s decision to use watercolour in this series marks a stylistic return to his hazy, blended, almost impressionistic oil paintings dating from 2016 and earlier.

Oehlen begins with a chalky white ground, across which he flicks and stains splashes of fluid colour. Hues dart between canvases: the same intense shade of magenta-a colour he previously referred to as ‘hysterical’ in the context of his Tree Paintings (2013-2016)-meanders snakelike from painting to painting, puncturing through the murky veil of watercolours in a vivid streak before resurfacing elsewhere as a series of dots peppered down the canvas. Oehlen revels in the dynamism of his lines, allowing them to come to life and dictate each twist of his ever-shifting compositions.

Nevertheless, Oehlen’s frenzied brushstrokes are tempered by moments of painterly control. Interspersed between splotches and swipes of colour are lines, curves, and gradients, all delineated with satisfying uniformity. While his paintings initially appear to lack geometric regularity, they are in fact filled with clean-cut right angles-including a recurring L-shaped motif, which recalls the artist’s yellow-and-black paintings from his 2018 exhibition SEXE, RELIGION, POLITIQUE. These forceful right angles-along with rectangular window-like apertures and eerie humanoid forms-are enshrouded deep within the canvas, their watery facture only adding to their frustrating, tantalising ephemerality. Swallowed up by the slashes of pigment surrounding them, these loose strands of figuration ultimately dissipate within a churning whirlwind of colours.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with a text by art historian Christian Malycha.

An exhibition of Oehlen’s work curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist will open at the Serpentine Galleries in London on October 2, 2019.