Since April 4 2018 until 6 January 2019 will be on display at Grassi Palace a Venezia eighty-five works by'German artist Albert Oehlen. The exhibition "Cows by the water", edited by Caroline Bourgeois, è the "Pù large monographic exhibition dedicated to'artist never made to date in Italy.
Albert Oehlen was born in 1954 in Krefeld, in 1981 he graduated all'Hochschule für Bildende Künste of Hamburg and from 2000 to 2009 he taught painting at the Kunstakademie of Düsseldorf. Since the 2000s she has exhibited her work in group and monographic exhibitions in the United States and Europe. Today he lives and works in Switzerland
The exhibition offers a non-chronological journey through Oehlen's artistic production from the years '80 to date. The works, coming both from Pinault Collection which from private collections and from important international museums, range from his first ones Computer paintings to the series of Trees, passing through the ironic self-portraits in which the'artist immortalizes himself with palette in hand.
The visitor who follows the'itinerary organized in the rooms of the eighteenth-century Palazzo Grassi is faced with a succession of dissonant, harsh combinations, interspersed with consonant color harmonies, pleasant as if a rhythm to follow, syncopated, from jazz improvisation was suggested to him. L'eye has no rest, it is captured by the shadesà acidic and ungainly, with brownish-gray lumps, and seeking respite, he moves on to some recognizable details: logos, as in his collages in which he combines images and words taken from billboards, fragments of geometric figures, traces of tapestry.
The coherence of Oehlen's artistic research è intuitive in the recurring motifs, the trees, the road, el'use of color, in quest'last we can find a key to read his artistic career. In the painting the'use of chromaticism tends to express the emotions that l'artist tries to project onto the viewer, here, on the contrary, the'identification è denied. It is reversed like thisì one of the cornerstones of the traditional medium par excellence. Painting è understood as extreme experimentation, also involving the'use of the body, such as fingers, I would pretend,'use of software to produce typographic signs, advertising posters, discount promotional signs.
In one of the last rooms of the exhibition we find a reproduction of the studio dell'artist complete with stereo system and records. Connected to a TV of a few decades ago a pair of headphones transmit music. On the site of Palazzo Grassi è a Spotify playlist of selected songs available from'artist, among them Conductions by Lawrence "Butch" Morris, from which one of Oehlen's series takes its name. The method of the cornet player, jazz composer tells us a lot about the way of working of'German artist. Morris using director's checkmarks d'orchestra altered, during the'execution, rhythm, melody, harmony all'within an established structure.
Method and disorder, impulse and reason, tradition and innovation are constantly short-circuited in Oehlen's work of which the Palazzo Grassi exhibition constitutes a' comprehensive narrative.
Martina Di Iulio – Master MaSvic 2017-18
