For German artist Albert Oehlen, the practice of painting is a subject in itself. Oehlen has redefined the boundaries of both figurative and abstract painting, expanding the definition of what makes a painting formally successful. While conscious of the conventional rules of the medium, Oehlen intentionally works against theories of color and composition in order to expose their limitations. The guiding principles of his method are uncertainty and eclecticism. In a method akin to Surrealism, Oehlen's work uses unrelated colors and images, suggesting stream of consciousness associations. This subversive process of abstraction has broadened the vocabulary of traditional painting and proven revelatory to his contemporaries. His various tools–''brushes, fingers, collage, computers''–are wielded with equal ease; in a process reminiscent of the Surrealists' ''exquisite corpse'' exercise, one method seems to spontaneously beget another. Luhring Augustine, 2006 13 x 16.5 inches, 22 pp., color illustrations Hardcover