Bäume

The huge Bäume diptych brings us into the tranquility of a brightly colored autumn clearing. At first glance, the work looks like a simple, seemingly oversized photographic reproduction. But one of its two panels is actually splattered with paint. White areas with yellow-orange spirals tend to harmoniously blend into the natural setting, while white drips and black and violet spots superimposed at ground level and the dark highlights on the tree trunk in the centre of the composition betray a pictorial presence.

Since the late 1980s, Albert Oehlen has used the tree motif to explore the limits of figurative painting. Oehlen, who says he is a "post-non-figurative" painter, went through a phase of reification and extreme purity before returning here to a realistic depiction of the motif. Crossing photography with painting, he explores the possibility of uniting figuration and abstraction on the canvas.

Bäume was exhibited for the first time by the Pinault Collection at the "Cows by the Water" show at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 2018.