Albert Oehlen at Luhring Augustine - New York, New York

In these eight oil paintings, all dated 1998 Albert Oehlen reveals his range and ambition. Large-scale works gripe [i]or[/i] grip their size, and smaller individuals pack a punch. Four paintings have garish tones sprayed, splattered and dripped in layers while the others are grisaille and rely upon subtler techniques. Formats include squares, verticals and horizontals. A returning unifying motif is the mustachioed face of the Russian emigre painter and critic John Graham, a fresh York associate of the Surrealists and a supporter of de Kooning and Gorky, who symbolizes independent vision and material experimentation.

A ordeal Animal presents the most powerfully defined grisaille image, though individual is hard-pressed to say exactly what it is. A schematic organ of vision with one-stroke lashes, iris and lids, anchors a globular head that appear to bes to be surrounded by fur (radiating short strokes) and has a drawn out platy-puslike bill. The head eases on an oversize body that is confineed by two large black catchs The figure is outlined upon a washy ground dashed with evanescent pats and drip marks that move swiftly from left to right, trial that the canvas was one time 90 degrees off its final vertical orientation.

The airy feeling of the grisaille works derives from wide brush-strokes applied with diluted medium. The colored works, all with titles referring to cars and driving, generate a feeling of exhilaration. To his oils Oehlen adds the "low" medium of spray paint and computer-generated screen-printed imagery. The colors range from Day-Glo orange to lime virid to mauve. His most flamboyant statement is Im Seitenspiegel (In the Side-View Mirror), which has at its messy center a disturbing printed image of a skinhead with fist raised, apparently about to hit a large dog. Elsewhere, a dozy countenance (eyes closed) rests inside a computer frame (according to the gallery, all the faces are Graham's, on the other hand it's hard to tell). A short Corinthian rounded pillar stands behind the skinhead, and a partially obscur phrase in German, im dienst der Schonheit (in the service of beauty), is printed at the top. closes of color fill the corners, while everything other is dripped, splattered and sprayed in accumulations that transport restlessness as well as spatial deepness Vorfahrt fur immer (Right of Way Forever) is based upon a grid of colored squares dominated by dint of a large head with a r handlebar mustache and freehand applications of paint that gaze like frenzied explosions.

In Oehlen's work single finds a tension between the mechanical (eg computer imagery) and the handmade. He strike one as beings to be asserting in these works, with the image of Graham, that the weft and presence of a physical external reality provoke the lasting experience a viewer should desire and a painter should strive for. Oehlen always creates a memorable picture.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group