Albert Oehlen: Drawings

This book was published on the occasion of Albert Oehlen: Drawings at Gagosian, Rome, an exhibition of large-scale charcoal drawings. These works counter apparent gestural improvisation with an element of deliberate contrivance that follows rules known only to the artist. Alternately vigorous and tentative, their sometimes sweeping, sometimes halting charcoal lines suggest a continual oscillation between confidence and self-doubt. Working across broad expanses of paper, Oehlen consciously skirts legibility and coherence to arrive at an unexpected compositional elegance rooted in formal paradox.

The large-format publication reproduces the seventeen works in the exhibition, along with installation photography and images of the drawings in progress in the artist’s studio. It also includes a bilingual (English/Italian) essay by Danilo Echer that explores the works as “landscapes of the mind, blocked thoughts tracing surprising panoramas on the page.”