In this book Albert Oehlen publishes two groups of works which he has made in the last three years: the grey paintings and the posters created on a computer. Summary of Contents addresses the question as to the contents of his work.

The book mixes the “abstract” paintings and the “concrete” ink jet plots in an unstructured sequence. Visual patterns from daily life are concentrated in them. Formal creation and artistic technique are the means employed. Like a sculpture chiseled out of one block, they bore down towards one single core.

Oehlen works on the “picture that one sees and does not analyze but simply perceives.” His pictures do not seek the support of fixed messages and do not anticipate their interpretation. The picture does not legitimize itself, does not exercise control over its viewer. It becomes autonomous and offers an open dialogue. In the moment of encounter the act of seeing strikes like lightning.

Today Albert Oehlen has the reputation of being one of the most compelling painters in Germany and exercises an influence upon his generation like that of Georg Baselitz, Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke upon theirs.

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In collaboration with Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin