Albert Oehlen - Mirror Paintings
Katja Hesch
Holzwarth Publications, ISBN 9783935567312,
Hb, 36 pgs, 30 x 31cm
12 ills
Acqn. 13894
Awaiting stock
£32.00
Hb, 36 pgs, 30 x 31cm
12 ills
Acqn. 13894
Awaiting stock
£32.00
The Mirror Paintings are not only mirror paintings and paintings with things attached to them, they are also what might be called "room paintings," that is to say, they always depict some kind of architectural space, usually an interior. The variety of these spaces is striking. Some look like basements partially closed off by cinder-block walls (inevitably evoking the Berlin Wall); others present dramatic views of circular staircases; and many others portray drab domestic spaces. A relatively large canvas, Treppenhaus alt (Old Staircase) features five separate mirrors, as well as subtle passages of purple spray paint, small clumps of paint scrapings, and a stark up/down division (sinuous railings above, a gridded floor below) that could almost read as a visual allegory of nineteenth- versus twentieth-century design. In 1991, just after he had made what remains the last of the Mirror Paintings, Oehlen explained why he paired mirrors and architecture, and also how he went about choosing which spaces to paint: "I only used mirrors in pictures depicting rooms, so that the viewer can place himself in the room. These rooms were chosen not on the basis of design, or architecture, or any other such criteria, but on the basis of their meaning, which I attribute to them in relation to society. Museum, apartment, Hitler's headquarters, things like that: a summons to appear in the picture."