Albert Oehlen

Max Hetzler Gallery, Berlin
Private Collection
Skarstedt Gallery, New York
Private Collection

Städischen Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, Markus Oehlen, Albert Oehlen - Ritt der Sieben Nutten - Das War Mein Jahrhundert, October 2000 - January 2001, p. 44, illustrated

This work is in very good condition overall. There is an overall undulation to the sheet, which is inherent to the medium. There are multiple artist pinholes in all four corners. There are small unobtrusive tears and losses along all four edges of the sheet, which appear inherent to the artist's working method. The sheet is mounted verso to the backing board and framed under Plexiglas.
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Mysterious and vibrant, Das Privileg/M III stands as an exemplary work from artist Albert Oehlen’s enticing John Graham Remix series. Through abstracted planes and horizontal lines, a green eye stares out at the viewer and the face of a moustached man can be faintly discerned. The image depicted is based on a distinctive self-portrait by Russian-born, Modernist John Graham. A key character in the mid-century New York art scene, Oehlen stumbled upon Graham’s work in 1990 whilst reading a biography on Jackson Pollock. He quickly developed a keen fascination with the character of Graham, which reached its pinnacle when he encountered Graham's Tramonto Spaventoso or ‘Terrible Sunset’. Painted around 1940, this cryptic artwork in which Graham presents himself with a moustache and monocle, surrounded by suns, moons and a mermaid in the right corner, became an endless source of inspiration and interpretation for Oehlen.

From his early years introducing punk to his art along with close friend and fellow artist Martin Kippenberger, to his examination of abstraction and studies in color, Oehlen has consistently moved across styles and interests. He began producing works from the John Graham Remix series in 1997 and has continued to do so throughout his career. In 2000, when Das Privileg/M III was created, his preoccupation with John Graham was demonstrably evident in his exhibitions of this period. The works from the series all follow a similar format loosely resembling the original yet to varying degrees of abstraction and transformation, each one is uniquely different. Highly abstracted and engrained with an element of whimsy and humour, Das Privileg/M III is illustrative of Oehlen’s iconic ability to dismantle established codes of picture making and create something that is undeniably his own. In his in-depth analysis of the John Graham Remix series, curator John Corbett has acknowledged “In all cases, Oehlen’s use of the Graham work reflects an intimate understanding of the art of the remix… For an underachiever like Graham, the Oehlen remix might eventually turn out to be his greatest hit” (John Corbett, “Terrible Sunset: Albert Oehlen’s John Graham Remixes”, in Hans Werner Holzwarth, Albert Oehlen, Cologne 2009, p. 347).