Albert Oehlen, born in 1954 in Krefeld, is one of the leading German contemporary artists. His work has conceptual parallels to Emil Schumacher’s way of approaching the canvas as an area on which the artist starts a dialogue with his painting. The subject of his ‘postungegenständliche’ (‘post-abstract’) art is the act of painting itself, the effect of the painting as projection surface, as commentary, as place of invention for form. His paintings are projections for gestures, which are also pictorial comments in the form of painted emotions. Since 2007, Albert Oehlen treats fragments of large posters with colorful gestures. His artistic language shifts from ironic commentary on the dubious aesthetic of the underlying advertisement and the free use of the forms found there. The often sparsely added gestures alter the shrill posters to abstract paintings of exciting intensity.

The Emil Schumacher Museum presents works of Albert Oehlen from 2008 to 2010, including works that have been painted for the exhibit in Hagen. Here, the Emil Schumacher Museum carries on the tradition of Karl Ernst Osthaus as advocate for great contemporary art. Furthermore, the museum honors Albert Oehlen as one of the most important contemporary painters of North-Rhine Westphalia during the cultural capital year “RUHR.2010”.