Albert Oehlen: Home and Garden

The New Museum will present the first major New York museum exhibition of the German artist Albert Oehlen (b. 1954). Demonstrating his immeasurable influence on contemporary painting, the exhibition will feature several of Oehlen's most important bodies of work, including a selection of his early self-portraits, his "post–non-objective" canvases, his computer paintings and switch paintings from the 1990s, and more recent works fusing appropriated advertising signage and abstract marks. Throughout his work, Oehlen displays an experimental and intuitive approach to painting and a refreshingly irrational sensibility inspired by a variety of influences, including punk and Surrealism. Rather than following a chronological path through Oehlen's prodigious 30-year career, Home and Garden will explore contrasts between interior and exterior, nature and culture, and irony and sincerity, illustrating the artist's commitment to expanding the language of painting in surprising ways. In recent years, as a younger generation of artists has turned again to painting as a critical medium, Oehlen's work has only become more influential and prescient. The exhibition is curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Artistic Director, and Gary Carrion-Murayari, Kraus Family Curator, with Natalie Bell, Assistant Curator.