Albert Oehlen - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Friday, October 17, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    Galerie Bärbel Grässlin, Frankfurt

  • Catalogue Essay

    Albert Oehlen created work that embodied the challenges that were confronting art in the 1970s to early 80s an era, in Germany, categorised by a rift between art, ideology and politics. Emerging simultaneously with Martin Kippenberger, Oehlen explored new ways of making art, in turn, forever altering the public perception of the artist. Albert Oehlen would come to use the traditional medium of canvas painting as a platform to communicate and reflect upon the events of the time.
    In the present lot, Untitled, Albert Oehlen presents a stirring darkness with unsettling exaggeration of painterly expression which challenges preconceived expectations of conventional abstraction. Oehlen entangles his audience into the paintings surface; he presents a web of unobtainable or definite information, yet simultaneously encourages his viewers to appreciate the juxtaposition between figuration and abstraction and the visual pleasure when placed together.

336

Untitled

1989

Oil and varnish on canvas.

200 x 200 cm. (78 3/4 x 78 3/4 in).
Signed and dated ‘A. Oehlen 89’ on the reverse.

Estimate
£120,000 - 180,000 Ω♠

Sold for £175,250

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

18 Oct 2008, 7pm
London