herbert oehm. entropy and order
Herbert Oehm (*1935) creates events on the surface. As a trained poster painter, student at the Ulm School of Design, representative of Concrete Art and member of the ZERO movement, his works offer an impressive variety and challenge the viewer.
Whether fluttering, shiny golden leaves, grid-like arrangements made of toilet paper, drop structures made of polyester resin, precisely painted colour gradients with a spatial effect or relief-like galaxies made of sand: Oehm’s oeuvre offers a pictorial world full of the most diverse materials and techniques. Thanks to his non-representational visual language, his canvas works are fascinating experiments with exact form and random composition. However, the purely artistic aspect of his work is not the main focus for the artist: Oehm sees his works as a visual means of conveying information, general world processes and phenomena in order to give form to thoughts on concepts such as order and entropy.
On the occasion of his 90th birthday, the kunsthalle weishaupt is dedicating a retrospective solo exhibition to the Ulm-born artist and illuminating Oehm’s work development in thematic groups that differ in terms of technique and materiality.