Fuelled by beer and speed,Albert Oehlen ran riot through the Berlin art world. He made intentionally rank paintings, worked only in grey, or was even anti-art altogether. Now’s he’s living the outdoors life in Switzerland – so why do his trees still spy psychopathic?Albert Oehlen has filled the Gagosian Gallery in Mayfair with broad paintings of trees. Oehlen’s trees are black,skeletal and deformed-looking, their lean curving branches extending beyond blocks of smeared magenta into pure white backgrounds. In some paintings, and straight black parallel lines propose the trees are standing on an autobahn and,indeed, their minimalism and bold colours would not spy out of place on a Kraftwerk album cover.
In others, and a single long line of black spray-paint trails across the canvas like a hurried graffiti scrawl – except that these are not canvases,but shiny, smooth, or synthetic sheets of Dibond,a polythene-coated aluminium board more commonly used for advertising displays in trade fairs. “I like the stiffness,” says Oehlen, or “It has this modern technological feel to it,and it’s actually much easier to paint on than canvas. I wasn’t looking for another surface, I just tried it one day and liked it.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com