A painting from 2008 on one side of the wall, one from 1991 on the other: in a large-scale installation constructed from partitions that could well remind visitors of roadside advertising hoardings, Albert Oehlen combines his latest pictures, featuring painted-over collages made from fragments of Spanish advertising posters, back to back with pictures from 1991. One’s gaze is first drawn to works which have just been created, then it’s drawn back to a time when the “post-non-figurative” artist had explored abstraction for four years. “It was a very good year,” as he says today.

Juxtaposition without confrontation. On the one hand, the colorful world of advertising opens up as art; on the other, putative objects disappear beneath the abstraction. However, this concept was not Oehlen’s first priority when painting his recent pictures: “I wanted emotions! At some point, I had to admit to myself that my approach to art was a bit sober. I analyze what I do very exactly. What I don’t need, I ignore. I plan my moves. I am, as far as art is concerned, very unemotional. Then at some point I became fascinated by Francis Picabia’s late nudes—someone had told me that he simply got a lot of pleasure from painting these women. So I thought: ‘What a pity, I’ve never worked like that’—just depicting something that I find seriously wonderful. At the same time, I’d always wanted to do Pop Art, big, colorful things with immediate appeal.”

The pages of this book take up the exhibition’s concept and, in this exchange of glances, not only shows how consistent Oehlen’s personal style as a painter has been over the years, but also the range of his artistic curiosity, which repeatedly challenges itself, the viewer, and the medium of painting in general with its constantly changing approach.

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In collaboration with Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin