Curated by Achim Hochdörfer

Albert Oehlen’s paintings want to be hard to love. Or do they? Often framed by double-edged terms such as bad taste, irony, or contamination, Oehlen’s work slides deftly from the abject to the impressive. Its vulnerabilities and strengths are at one in its sheer permissiveness. By all measures, this German artist’s shadow is long, so some goodly anticipation surrounds what will be his first career survey in Austria. Organized by Achim Hochdörfer (who is no less able an interrogator of painting’s current potential) and couched largely in terms of confrontations among works, this exhibition will bring together approximately one hundred paintings, drawings, and collages, spanning the early 1980s through today. An unorthodox accompanying catalogue designed by Heimo Zobernig incorporates conversations between the curator and art historian Hal Foster, the critic Kerstin Stakemeier and the artist Rochelle Feinstein, as well as Daniel Richter in dialogue with the Maler himself.

— Matt Saunders