In der Wohnung

In der Wohnung is an Albert Oehlen book about the painted interior, the domestic room that painters have used since antiquity to suggest depth.

Edition Patrick Frey of Zürich published it in 2015 as number 195, edited by STUDIOLO with the press and designed by Teo Schifferli. It is a hardcover of 128 pages with 67 color and 23 black-and-white images, and it was among the Most Beautiful Swiss Books of 2015. It follows a spring 2014 exhibition that Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen put together with Oehlen at the Gebert Stiftung für Kultur in Rapperswil-Jona, near Zürich, on approaches to the painted interior in contemporary art. Frey’s page describes the book as moving through a landscape, then a building within it and the rooms inside, before ending as a tour of the exhibition. It says Oehlen’s works in the landscape refer to paintings by Richard Artschwager, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger and Roy Lichtenstein, among others.

Oehlen is a German painter born in Krefeld in 1954 and, in Frey’s words, now based in Appenzell, Switzerland. Frey adds that his recent collages rework sources such as Vuillard and Dalí into pop-art panels. His gallery, Max Hetzler, says he has collided styles, orders and media since the 1980s, and Hetzler’s own press text notes that he has shown with the gallery regularly since 1981.