Celtic Funk Etcetera

Karma International is pleased to present Celtic Funk Etcetera, Markus Oehlen’s first solo exhibition with the gallery in Los Angeles. Celtic Funk Etcetera delves further into Oehlen’s penchant for music and culture through the artist’s signature style. From mixed media work bearing carefully chosen ephemera— an image of a cassette tape, for instance—to the artist’s particular brushstrokes, this exhibition conveys Oehlen’s experiences as a musician and artist in a manner that is radically inclusive and relatable to those in and outside of the art world. It is the message behind this exhibition, the experience of the individual as artist as opposed to merely art for art’s sake, that popularized Oehlen’s work and keeps it on the cutting edge. First rising to prominence in Dusseldorf in the 1980s as a former leader of the Neue Wilde movement—which also included Martin Kippenberger, Georg Herold, Günther Förg, Werner Büttner, and the artist’s brother Albert Oehlen—Oehlen’s style and media of choice are formed as a pushback to minimalism and conceptual art. Whereas conceptual or minimal artists might reduce their work to a regulated grid or simply a few colors to further a reflexive art lineage, Oehlen uses raked-through lines of translucent paint layered atop multi-hued expressionist strokes—effectively snaking the grid up and down his canvases with gestures that often start and stop unexpectedly, emphasizing the artist’s hand in the creation process. These grid-like lines also allude to the musical staff: the set of five horizontal lines on which musical notes are placed in written sheet music. As with other contemporary artists, specifically some in the Los Angeles canon such as Mike Kelley or Paul McCarthy, Oehlen is very involved in music, playing with his own band. The photo paper clippings that form the bottom layer of these pieces are engagingly playful and witty. An image of toothpaste coils, with its own embedded color stripes, echos the gestures in the artist’s raked-through brushstrokes to champion the everyday, make fun of minimalism’s revered grids, and show Oehlen’s punk roots. He continues this humorous irreverence throughout his photo imagery with subject matter such as a recurring dead fly, anonymous pills, lunchmeat on bread, and an elfish girl’s facial profile. As with the title of the show, these images are specific and still open in their meaning; they are expressive for the artist while also translating to the cultural environment in which they are shown. Markus Oehlen (b. 1956 in Krefeld, Germany) has work in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Saint Louis Art Museum, Samlung zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Kunsthalle Weishaupt, and more. Selected recent exhibitions of Oehlen’s work took place at Karma Internation, Zurich; S2 Gallery, London; Gerhardson Gerner, Berlin; and Juana de Sizpuru, Madrid among other. He attended the Academy of Fine Art in Dusseldorf, Germany. He has been a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany since 2002. He lives and works in Munich, Germany.

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