Oska Gutheil “The Last Kind”

1969 Gallery

[Image: Oska Gutheil "Wandlung" (2022) oil on canvas, 87h x 71w in.]

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1969 presents The Last Kind, an exhibition of new paintings by Oska Gutheil in his first solo exhibition with the Gallery in their Lower East Side location.

Gutheil’s paintings depict vibrant, strange, and liberatory worlds populated with humans and creatures alike. He embraces the weird, presenting the viewer with narratives and situations that express the fluidity of life and identity. In Spinner, two hybrid creatures that appear to be a mixture between human and spider gaze anxiously beyond the painting’s borders. While the setting appears concrete—whimsical foliage with a multicolored sunset striped across the sky—there is still much in the painting that remains left to the imagination.

In a realm so visually different from ours, how are viewers to know why these figures appear so troubled? Are they holding a conversation? Avoiding each other? In fact, these human-animal hybrids that populate many of Gutheil’s canvases serve as representations for the radical transformations that Gutheil’s work embodies as a whole. Wandlung, which translates directly to “transformation”, shows a marriage between the weight lived experience and the explosive potential of figurative thought. The figure on the left appears slumped and defeated, while the abstracted fruit-inspired figure on the right towers over him, offering a banana, eye contact, a touch.

Oska Gutheil (b. 1980, Ravensburg, Germany) recieved his MFA 2007 at Universität der Künste, Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include institutional shows in Germany at Museum Kunstsammlung, Jena, (G); Övre at Kunstraum Potsdam; and Fitz Fatz Peng at Kunstverein Ulm (G). He is represented by Russi Klenner Galerie, Berlin. He also had solo exhibitions at Galeria Nuno Centeno, Porto, Portugal; Mike Weiss Gallery NYC, Gallery Krinzinger Schottenfeld, Wien Austria; Angell Gallery, Toronto; and Sorry We are Closed Gallery, Brussels, Belgium. His paintings was included in exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Marburg and Marburger Kunstverein, (G); Hall Art Fondation – Schloss Derneburg (G); ASU Artmuseum, Phoenix Arizona; Goethe-Institut Hongkong, Hong Kong; Matsumoto City Museum of Art, Japan; Hort Family Collection, NYC; Albertz Benda Gallery, NYC; PM/AM London, UK; and Josh Lilley Gallery, London, UK. Oska Gutheil lives and works in Berlin, Germany.