Albert Oehlen- German Painter

 

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​Albert Oehlen's new work is stunning.   I have talked about his older work before but his new work is more in line of my latest works.  One of his favorite artist is Malcolm Morley. He said, "Malcom Morley is the greatest alive. It is so impressive to me what he did — so funny and so smart.  He also speaks about his experience with de Kooning when he was teaching at the Black Mountain School.  Oehlen had the students work for a very long time on one drawing. It was about what happens if you spend days on one drawing. Oehlen thought this idea was so crazy and so intelligent. It wasn’t about showing that if you work more, it gets better. You might destroy it, or you might end up somewhere else. You might get bored. He was not saying drawing can only be good if you work for a week on it. He just wanted to explore what happened.  I found this analogy interesting. I have been working on four large pieces on paper this semester. I started with figures then added shapes, collage, screen print.  I keep changing them and I'm not sure if I'm destroying them or just getting them to a place where they work.  I just want to push these pieces as far as I can.  I know this may or may not work out but it's just what I do when I'm struggling to resolve something. It seems to make the next pieces I work on better.  I think as an artist you always have to have work that is experimental. Some that you don't care how far you push it.  Of course not all work should be done in this way. Once you find something that works I think you should hang on to it.  This struggle of figure, abstract, structure verses, chaos seems to be a constant theme in my work.