Albert Oehlen/Peppi Bottrop: Line Packers
at the Marciano Art Foundation

Albert Oehlen/Peppi Bottrop Line Packers (2018). Installation view at Marciano Art Foundation, 2018. Image courtesy of Marciano Art Foundation. Photo: Julian Calero.

While at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Peppi Bottrop studied with Albert Oehlen, who is a specialist of pictorial unpredictability, fusing analog and digital techniques together in uncanny ways. Bottrop has essentially done the opposite over his young career, plodding along instead in the realm of color, composition, substance, and substantiality; he rarely veers from two-tone or greyscale surfaces covered with expressive, linear gestures. At the Marciano Art Foundation, a ritzy new art institution located in an old Masonic temple, the two artists relieve themselves of the master-sensei dynamic and alternatively strive towards a more balanced collaborative effort.  

For Line Packers, Bottrop and Oehlen have constructed two unfinished planes of aluminum studs—a somewhat unfortunate trope in our very recent blogged-about art history. Nevertheless, Bottrop and Oehlen’s aesthetic decision serves the exhibition, conceptually; merging on this neutral non-wall, each artist’s work is given primacy. On the studs, Bottrop has mounted shards and slabs of the environment-friendly fiberboard known as Fermacell—each of which contains anti-images that he has scrawled with charcoal and an anxious confidence. Atop the Bottrops hang a small sampling of Oehlen’s Computer Paintings (1992-2008), a semi-quizzical body of work made using a now extremely outdated Texas Instruments laptop. Despite the rapid turnover in technology since they were produced, the works possess a focused nonchalance that has allowed them to age well into our new digitized reality.   

There is something of a strange Catholicism to this pairing that is rather curious given the context of the space, as well as the Masons’ relationship to the Church. The show benefits from the bold intuition that is derived from the tenuous back-and-forth between comfort and discomfort. The artists’ own relationship provides comfort, while their subtle references to social and political issues elicit some amount of discomfort. As for us viewers, we are currently, collectively grappling with the repercussions of self-proclaimed populist leaders profiting off their people and a progressive pope with a Twitter account. Oehlen’s mechanized pictures are nostalgic reminders for many of a more hopeful future, while Bottrop’s frenetic exercises are more like metaphors for our prevailing vulnerability. Unlike members of fraternal orders, these two men seek stasis in a room of pseudo-transparent walls; but like the Catholics and the Masons, they find it in what some might consider to be rote methods.

Albert Oehlen / Peppi Bottrop: Line Packers runs from March 1–June 2018 at the Marciano Art Foundation (4357 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90010)

Albert Oehlen/Peppi Bottrop Line Packers (2018). Installation view at Marciano Art Foundation, 2018. Image courtesy of Marciano Art Foundation. Photo: Julian Calero.

Albert Oehlen/Peppi Bottrop Line Packers (2018). Installation view at Marciano Art Foundation, 2018. Image courtesy of Marciano Art Foundation. Photo: Julian Calero.

Albert Oehlen/Peppi Bottrop: Line Packers (2018). Installation view at Marciano Art Foundation, 2018. Image courtesy of Marciano Art Foundation. Photo: Julian Calero.

Albert Oehlen/Peppi Bottrop: Line Packers (2018). Installation view at Marciano Art Foundation, 2018. Image courtesy of Marciano Art Foundation. Photo: Julian Calero.

Albert Oehlen/Peppi Bottrop: Line Packers (2018). Installation view at Marciano Art Foundation, 2018. Image courtesy of Marciano Art Foundation. Photo: Julian Calero.

Albert Oehlen/Peppi Bottrop: Line Packers (2018). Installation view at Marciano Art Foundation, 2018. Image courtesy of Marciano Art Foundation. Photo: Julian Calero.

Keith J. Varadi is a Pittsburgh-born, Los Angeles-based artist, poet, critic, and curator who has been employed by multiple intelligence and investigations firms, mostly focusing on corporate due diligence. Previously, he was a researcher for the long-running television game show, Jeopardy!. He runs the gallery Gene’s Dispensary out of an old medical office building near MacArthur Park.

More by Keith J. Varadi