Albert Oehlen (b. 1954) is one of the most influential contemporary painters of the international art scene. Since the 1980s he has been exploring the potential and limits of painting, constantly questioning its subjects and the methods and media that it employs, through his continuously evolving style and technique. Born in Krefeld, Germany, Oehlen studied at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg from 1978 to 1981, and soon became a prominent figure of the Berlin and Cologne art scenes. During that time, he was considered an artist of the Junge Wilde (Young Wilds) movement, along with Martin Kippenberger and Werner Büttner, producing works that challenged the categorisation of art and rejected the art system itself. Oehlen deconstructed painting, stripping it down to its constituent parts – colour, gesture, movement and time – and advancing his artistic quest with rules and restrictions that he imposed upon his own artistic process, which offered him new starting points to continue redefining the understanding of painting. Over the years, this way of working, which Oehlen continues to use today, has led to surprising series of works that combine abstract and figurative art and different styles and techniques. Since the time of his Bad Paintings, Oehlen also features clumsiness and ugliness in his work – disturbing gestures, roughly depicted figures, artificial smudges of paint, daring and jarring colours – constantly applying pressure to the painting system and displaying infinite combinations and manipulations with which he creates new perceptive challenges for the public too.