Markus Oehlen (1956)

Markus Oehlen

Markus Oehlen is a German artist and musician.

Markus Oehlen graduated from the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts, where his mentor was Alfonso Hüppi. Oehlen was one of the main members of the German "New Wilde" (Neue Wilde) art movement, which flourished in the 1980s and was characterized by the use of punk style elements in opposition to the then prevalent minimalism.

Oelen is constantly refining the technique of his paintings and also working in parallel on sculptures and musical projects. His new works are increasingly influenced by the perceptual experiments of op-art with their interference of printed images, which emerge as lattice patterns from below and above the image layers. Alongside forms oriented towards a computer aesthetic, this brings elements of the avant-garde into his images. By rearranging the individual compositional elements of the canvas, Oelen creates surrealist still lifes, playing with the notion of chance and suggesting bizarre narratives.

Markus Oehlen has been a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich since 2002.