Albert Oehlen
The Painter, a film by Albert Oehlen, Oliver Hirschbiegel and Ben Becker
Under the direction of Oliver Hirschbiegel, actor Ben Becker on screen impersonates the contemporary painter Albert Oehlen and re-creates a painting that Oehlen himself and in parallel is creating step by step in the background, with the actor improvising the process in front of the camera. The finished on-screen painting is an original “Oehlen” on which the artist himself never laid hands. The off screen blueprint painting was destroyed after principal shooting had finished.
Originally planned to be a performative statement the projects developed into a fully fledged feature film of 92 minutes, crossing formal boundaries and questioning the meaning of the creative process and the struggle for authenticity on various levels.
The Painter follows the artist / actor as he is struggling and suffering along this process with us watching in joyful despair and what might happen next until the white canvas has turned into a finished painting.
The outcome is a one-man rollercoaster that appears to be a documentary but in fact is a staged and guided improvisation with the “real” process happening behind the camera. The Painter is a constant flow of the artist’s journey with elements of farce and comedy topped with emotional moments of truth...in front of and behind the camera and leaving it up to us to decide what is real and/or authentic.
Watch the trailer here.
Darren Almond, Giulia Andreani, Jeremy Demester, Albert Oehlen, Tursic & Mille, Christopher Wool et al.
The Inner Island (group show)
Villa Carmignac, Île de Porquerolles, Hyères
29 April – 5 November 2023
Works by Darren Almond, Giulia Andreani, Jeremy Demester, Tursic & Mille and Christopher Wool will be on view in the exhibition The Inner Island, curated by Jean-Marie Gallais. Inspired by the insular location of the Fondation Carmignac’s villa on Porquerolles, a remote island off the French Mediterranean coast in the region of the Côte d’Azur, the exhibition explores the notion of interiority as a powerful driver of creation. Floating outside of known geographies and temporalities, the artists included in this exhibition populate their images with strange and foreign presences – human, animal, hybrid, or supernatural. The result is a distance from reality which encourages an immersion into inner worlds and recesses, giving rise to fictional, mental, or abstract islands.
Villa Carmignac
Darren Almond, Giulia Andreani, Jeremy Demester, Albert Oehlen, Tursic & Mille, Christopher Wool, Albert Oehlen, Christopher Wool et al.
Beautiful, Vivid, Self-contained (group show)
Hill Art Foundation, New York
21 April – 21 July 2023
Work by Albert Oehlen and Christopher Wool will be included in Beautiful, Vivid, Self-contained, an exhibition of paintings and sculptures curated by the artist and writer David Salle. Including works drawn from the foundation’s collection, as well as the collection of Tom and Janine Hill and loans from private collections, the exhibition brings together paintings and sculptures by artists working across different eras, mediums, and geographies to explore the nature of affinity between works of art. As Salle asks in the catalogue essay that accompanies the exhibition: ‘How can works of art be said to “recognize” each other? How do things made decades or centuries apart, things that may look dissimilar on the surface come to have a communality of tone, and of feeling?’ In grouping the works within the exhibition, Salle taps into the power of juxtaposition, thus proclaiming that ‘Juxtaposition is the art of the possible.’
Hill Art Foundation
Darren Almond, Giulia Andreani, Jeremy Demester, Albert Oehlen, Tursic & Mille, Christopher Wool, Albert Oehlen, Christopher Wool, Albert Oehlen, Adam Pendleton
Oehlen, Pendleton, Pope.L, Sillman (publication)
Published by Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris | London / Holzwarth Publications, 2023
The new catalogue published on the occasion of the group exhibition Oehlen, Pendleton, Pope.L, Sillman, on view at Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin from 4 November 2021 until 29 January 2022, is now available for purchase. Alongside installation views and high-resolution images, the publication includes a conversation between Amy Sillman, Adam Pendleton, and Isabelle Graw.
Learn more
Darren Almond, Giulia Andreani, Jeremy Demester, Albert Oehlen, Tursic & Mille, Christopher Wool, Albert Oehlen, Christopher Wool, Albert Oehlen, Adam Pendleton, Albert Oehlen, Rudolf Stingel, Christopher Wool et al.
Together, at the Same Time (group show)
de La Cruz Collection, Miami
2022–2023
Works by Albert Oehlen, Rudolf Stingel, and Christopher Wool are included in Together, at the Same Time. The annual exhibition at the de La Cruz Collection brings together paintings, sculpture, and site-specific works from Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz’s private collection. More than four dozen artists are represented.
de La Cruz Collection
Darren Almond, Giulia Andreani, Jeremy Demester, Albert Oehlen, Tursic & Mille, Christopher Wool, Albert Oehlen, Christopher Wool, Albert Oehlen, Adam Pendleton, Albert Oehlen, Rudolf Stingel, Christopher Wool, André Butzer, Albert Oehlen et al.
Nacktheit der Zeichnung: Arbeiten in Schwarz auf Weiss von Beckmann Bis Warhol (group show)
Gesellschaft für Gegenwartskunst Augsburg
30 September – 4 December 2022
This exhibition presents some 90 works on paper produced on a mostly intimate scale, with a variety of techniques, encompassing pencil, ink, gouache, and collage. Ranging from figuration to abstraction and spanning over 100 years, the diverse works included in this exhibition are nevertheless united by a deep engagement with form, surface, and line.
Gesellschaft für Gegenwartskunst Augsburg
Albert Oehlen et al.
Space for Imaginative Actions (group show)
Kunstmuseum Bonn
8 May 2022 – 31 January 2024
Works by Albert Oehlen are now represented at the group exhibition Space for Imaginative Actions at Kunstmuseum Bonn. The exhibition celebrated the museum’s thirtieth anniversary and brings together monographic and thematic works from more than forty artists.
Kunstmuseum Bonn