Albert Oehlen
Talking about Painting
From March 15, 2014
Museum Folkwang
Museumsplatz 1
45128 Essen
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10–18h,
Friday 10–22h
T +49 201 8845 000
Since 15 March, Museum Folkwang, Essen has been showcasing the artist Albert Oehlen as a collector and curator for the first time. In two rooms of the permanent collection, Albert Oehlen curates a presentation of his paintings and drawings in dialogue with pieces from both his own collection and the Museum Folkwang collection.
One of the most important artists of his generation, Albert Oehlen radically broke with all conventions of painting in the 1980s. In 1984, Albert Oehlen and Martin Kippenberger provoked their audience with their exhibition Truth is Labor (Wahrheit ist Arbeit) at Museum Folkwang, Essen. Time and again, he has challenged his own work with “post-non-figurative” paintings—as he calls them. Since the 1990s, he has developed a diverse and complex painterly oeuvre. The exhibition Talking about Painting spans 16 pieces in total and highlights linkages between Oehlen’s works to Abstract Expressionists such as Willem de Kooning and German abstract painters such as Peter Brüning. In the context of works by Matthias Schaufler and Rebecca Warren, Albert Oehlen daringly offers a view of the future of painting, and with Anthony Caro and Zdenêk Sykóra declares it as an open field.
With the presentation curated by Albert Oehlen, in the rooms of its collection Museum Folkwang presents one of the most important positions in painting today, once again spotlighting the wealth of its collection through the medium of an outstanding contemporary artist.
