39,90

Leaping between calculation and spontaneity, intellectualism and instinct, the oeuvre of Albert Oehlen is as anarchic as it is eye-catching. The prodigious painting and collage 39,90 is a stellar example of this practice. Originally exhibited at Galerie Max Hetzler’s career-spanning 2008 exhibition, it advances the artist’s longstanding fusion of strident, expressive brushstrokes and digitally printed media. Atop the canvas, Oehlen has attached cuttings from two posters. The first, a tan rectangle from an advertisement, bears the titular price tag; the second, cut as if to resemble the framed windows of a motor vehicle, demonstrates painterly daubs of color. At the center of the canvas, over these collage elements, the artist has conjured a frantic cloud of oil paint. It melds pungent greens, wispy purples and streams of white, echoing the coloration of the upper poster. Streaks of bloody red add an intimation of violence.

Sumptuous in texture and color and yet turbulent, Oehlen’s paint beguiles as it disconcerts. In this it carries the emotive potency of Abstract Expressionism, especially as represented by the forceful impasto of Willem de Kooning. Oehlen effaces the posters beneath his strokes, indicating its lack of potency compared to paint. Yet at the same time he brings he brings it to the arena of fine art, signaling printed ephemera's ubiquity in contemporary experience. “I was aiming,” Oehlen explains, “at abstract painting that had an innate irritability caused by the obtrusive advertisements” (A. Oehlen quoted in Albert Oehlen 1991 2008, exh. cat., Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, 2008, p. 81). 39,90 acutely captures the overstimulation of the information age while celebrating the joys of paint.