ALBERT OEHLEN

The Hamburger Kunsthalle is presenting its first solo exhibition devoted to the painter Albert Oehlen (b. 1954). Oehlen’s Computer Images, a rarely seen group of works, will be exhibited on the first floor of the gallery of contemporary art in an arrangement determined in close collaboration with the artist. The geometric austerity of architect Oswald Mathias Ungers’s light-flooded galleries offers an ideal setting for a form of painting that hints at analogies to musical composition techniques as well as questions about the cross-fertilisation of technology and artistic expression. 

Oehlen painted his first computer images in the early 1990s, and a second series in the early 2000s. They were based on drawings he made with a computer notebook he purchased in 1990 which he then transferred to canvas. The technological aesthetic of the computer screen would have far-reaching implications as the point of departure for a complex of works that oscillate between cool austerity and imaginative formal exuberance. In light of today’s debate on artificial intelligence, the idea of producing art with the help of a computer has exciting current relevance, and it becomes even more topical if we take to heart the conclu-sions Oehlen has drawn from his engagement with computer art, such as: »The work must then be finished by the human hand.«

Albert Oehlen (born in Krefeld) lives and works in Gais in the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Switzer-land. He studied at Hamburg University of Fine Arts (HFBK) from 1977 to 1981, with Sigmar Polke and others. His first solo exhibition, Bevor ihr malt, mach ich das lieber (Before you paint, I’d better do it myself) at Galerie Max Hetzler in 1981, launched his career as one of the most prolific painters of the present day. From 2000 to 2009, Oehlen was a professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. In 2015 he received an honorary doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Oehlen’s art is regularly featured in solo exhibitions at museums and galleries worldwide.