The best way to see the exhibition Albert Oehlen: Home & Garden, at the New Museum, is (in my opinion) in reverse order. In other words, take in the nine painting on the fourth floor first, then get the “back story” from the [mostly] earlier works on three.

The large paintings upstairs bristle with an energy whose effect is to make the surfaces seem to be escaping their containers. Oehlen, who in interviews has said that among his greatest influences are works by Willem de Kooning, has created a method of painting that is, simultaneously, like: collage but in reverse; assemblage as defacement; abstract expressionism’s Action Painting but painted slowly and deliberately; Pop Art but adopting icons to make them unrecognizable. 

In this group of paintings the artist combines surfaces from wallpaper, printed fabrics, posters, with digital imagery sometimes silkscreened over, all applied to canvas or wood and further overworked with oil and acrylic paint in loud colors. The effect is controlled visual mayhem—perhaps an apt metaphor for this age of terrorism.

In an interview for Art in America the artist said of Action Painting, “It was by no means my favorite type of painting; I merely thought I should give it a try, and since my approach is a deliberate, very slow way of painting and a very artificial procedure, it cannot ever be considered spontaneous or aggressive. Everything that played a role in action painting was intentionally left out, totally eliminated. My pictures were constructed. And then to be confronted with the term 'action’ . . . after my work of the past twenty years . . . that was finally the moment when I was able to get somewhere with action. When I integrated it into my practice, it became a wholly different story than if I had simply charged at the canvas headfirst in 1988.” [more] 

While these paintings at first might seem to have been dashed off, it becomes evident that they are the result of a rational working process. In an almost inconceivably strange way, they are stately—and, therefore, feel entirely new. In an interview with Glenn O’Brien, Oehlen said that he learned early in his career the importance of having rules to govern his work, such as, “work slower,” and in particular, to create a feeling of insecurity by changing the material. He said, “It starts when you’ll go shopping for art supplies. You make decisions, and they’re always the same, like the kind of brushes you buy. And if you’re forced to change something, it gives an insecurity to the work that is very helpful. It makes you find out what you really need.” [more] Top: Streithelfer [Intervener], 1997 [detail]. Middle: fourth floor, installation view, Panza de burro, 2001, at right. Below: Third floor, installation view, computer paintings from the 1990s. Photos: Peggy Roalf

Albert Oehlen: Home and Garden continues at the New Museum through September 13. On Thursday July 9, 7 pm, the museum presents a Keynote Lecture by Mark Godfrey, whose essay Disdain and Desire: Albert Oehlen’s Abstraction is included in the exhibition catalogue [Skira 2015]. Information.