From 1978 to 1981, Oehlen pursued his studies at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg in Germany, establishing himself swiftly in the art scenes of Berlin and Cologne. He became a member of the Junge Wilde group, alongside Martin Kippenberger and Werner Büttner, who aimed to create art that defied categorization and challenged the existing artistic conventions. Oehlen’s artistic practice involved examining the fundamental aspects of painting – color, gesture, motion, and time – in order to deconstruct the medium. This approach led him to experiment with various styles and techniques.
Throughout his career, Oehlen continued to explore new possibilities by incorporating technology into his work. He embraced inkjet printers, computer-aided design programs, and referred to the pixelated lines of computer screens. By doing so, he constantly altered the parameters he had set for himself, presenting new obstacles and challenges. For instance, he imposed limitations on his palette and combined perambulating black lines with carefully blended gradations in his Baumbilder (Tree Paintings). Additionally, he utilized techniques such as erasure and layering to juxtapose bright and muddy colors in his Elevator Paintings, a nine-part work created in 2016. In the late 1990s, Oehlen even spray-painted over collaged imagery on canvas, using large industrial printers typically employed for billboards.
Notably, Oehlen embraced the concept of “bad” painting, which allowed for a deliberate embrace of awkwardness and ugliness in his work. He incorporated unsettling gestures, crudely drawn figures, visceral smears of artificial pigments, as well as bold hues and flesh tones. Through this approach, Oehlen demonstrated that painting offers infinite possibilities for exploring form, and highlighted the artist’s ability to manipulate these combinations to create new perceptual challenges for the viewer.
www.ftn-books.com has the Kunsthalle Zurich book ao available.
