Albert Oehlen
Luhring Augustine | Chelsea
In Albert Oehlen’s recent show—six canvases displayed along with three “computer drawings” that read as commentaries on the paintings—fans of conceptual abstraction are made as much a butt of his biting humor as the German public was in earlier work, which at times employed fascist imagery to probe German attitudes toward the past. Oehlen’s conceptual strategies are mordant and aggressive, but also convoluted. Expressionism has for some time been his primary target as well as his weapon of choice; but he goes far beyond merely exposing the impossibility of any kind of complete expression.
Indeed,