Born: September 17, 1954 (age 67 years), Krefeld, Germany
Period: Contemporary art
Education: (Academy of Arts in Hamburg) Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg
Siblings: Markus Oehlen
Oehlen is associated with the Cologne art scene, and his art reflects this.
His work has been classified as Neue Wilde (new wild), and he's been described more recently as "a free radical" concerning other contemporary artists.
He was also a member of Lord Jim Lodge, an artistic group that included Martin Kippenberger.
Oehlen has been a significant figure on the German art scene for decades, and his famed self-portraits date as far back as 1984.
In recent work, flat cut-outs and gestural oil painting play a role in Oehlen's collages. Many of these elements were created with a computer design program, illustrating the artist's trading of media in his work.
In his recent Finger Paintings, color-blocked advertisements are an extension of the canvas, providing fragment surfaces for Oehlen's visceral markings created with hands, brushes, and spray cans.
In 2014, Skarstedt Gallery in New York hosted an exhibition of Oehlen's "Fabric Paintings". The show consisted of fourteen paintings created between 1992 and 1996, most of which were kept in the artist's studio.
Like many well-known artists, Oehlen had his first major New York exhibition in 2015 named "Albert Oehlen: Home and Garden," which showcased self-portraits from the 1980s and 1990s.
"If someone stands in front of one of my paintings and says, 'This is just a mess', the word 'just' is not so good, but 'mess' might be right. Why not a mess? If it makes you say, 'Wow, I've never seen anything like that', that's beautiful."
-Albert Oehlen