Bad Painter: Albert Oehlen’s gleefully absurd self-portrait

• Reviewed from the 2025 International Film Festival Rotterdam

Albert Oehlen wastes no time in setting the tone for his solo directorial debut, the unabashedly perverse Bad Painter. In close-up, a corkscrew slowly twists into frame. The instrument is then buried into an eyeball (presumably that of a dead animal), stirring up great gobs of jelly.

This opening shot will tickle fans of Oehlen, one of the most widely-celebrated contemporary artists to emerge from Germany’s Neue Wilde movement, and confirm to his sharpest critics their worst suspicions – chiefly that the painter, now 70, is little more than a tongue-in-cheek provocateur. Regardless of which side you’re on, the intention is clear: this knowing riff on Un Chien Andalou’s (1929) eye-slicing opener invites audiences into the artist’s subconscious. 

Taking the form of a mockumentary, Bad Painter sees Albert Oehlen straddle the line between fact and fiction in piecing together an abstract autobiopic. We follow the German painter (albeit played by actor Udo Kier) through the day-to-day toil of an artist at work, contending with his inner voice (provided by a perfectly droll Kim Gordon) and the delirious world of contemporary art. 

If you think this all sounds very Synecdoche, New York (2008), you’d be half right. It’s familiar ground for Oehlen, whose previous features – Yellow (2024) and The Painter (2021), both collaborations with director Oliver Hirschbiegel – also looked to observe and obscure the artistic process. But his latest fully embraces irreverent humour, with spurts of gore, bawdy gags, and narrative tangents that trail off like abandoned thoughts. While its 80min runtime may look inviting, Bad Painter is determined to test the limits of viewers’ mental bandwidth for buffoonery. 

But just when you’re ready to dismiss the film as an indulgent oddity, a handful of truths gradually emerge. Much like A Bigger Splash (1974) blurred reality and fantasy when chronicling the genesis of David Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), Bad Painter does so to expose the limitations of capturing artistic inspiration through traditional modes of filmmaking. The scene that best captures this approach sees Kier’s Oehlen in the throes of nostalgia. “It was a different time…” he sighs, caressing an old photograph. The quiet of the moment is soon punctured when our film crew – camera person, boom operator, even director Albert Oehlen – looking to achieve a greater sense of authenticity, continuously cut the action to offer up notes, thus rendering the whole thing a farce.  

Most of Bad Painter isn’t as easily categorised; its constant layering of ideas means it’s an experiment you’ll have more fun describing than analysing. But like Oehlen’s canvas work, the film’s true pleasure lies in its boundless energy, a sense of play that, though wilfully crass at times, makes for a gleefully absurd self-portrait.