Paulina Caspari Gallery

Oliver Osborne – Der Tegernseer Bauernjunge

15.05. – 20.06.2026

Oliver Osborne (born in Edinburgh in 1985, lives and works in Berlin) presents a group of new works in his first solo exhibition at Paulina Caspari. The exhibition title Der Tegernseer Bauernjunge refers to August Macke’s portrait of the same name from 1910, a portrait of a village child from Macke’s Tegernsee Year, which is now in the collection of the Lenbachhaus in Munich, and alludes to Osborne’s practice, which is characterised by the intertwining of the present and the historical.

For Osborne, history does not mean the accumulation of a canonical body of knowledge, but rather a relationship that must be continually renegotiated, in which the study of older painting opens up the possibility of expanding the traditional canon and shifting the boundaries that modernism has deliberately drawn. Through his in-depth study of Cézanne’s portrait of his son, which he encountered in the Tate Modern retrospective in 2022, Osborne came to engage with the genre of children’s portraits, which is continued in the exhibition. The paintings function as amalgams in which different forms of closeness converge: the familiarity that emerges from the recognition of art-historical references and the painter’s bond with his models. In Osborne’s most recent works, it is the faces of his own children that appear in the portraits.

The exhibition is accompanied by a text by Prof. Dr. Ulrich Pfisterer, Director of the Central Institute for Art History and, since 2006, Professor of Art History at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. After completing his doctorate at the University of Göttingen and his habilitation at the University of Hamburg, he undertook research stays at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, the Getty Research Centre in Los Angeles and the CASVA at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. His work focuses on early modern art in Europe as well as the methodology and historiography of art history.

Oliver Osborne
May, evening, 2024
Oil on herringbone linen
65 x 55 x 3 cm / 78 x 68 x 6 cm with frame

Oliver Osborne
The Sleeping Guard V, 2026
Oil and acrylic on linen
158 x 72 x 3 cm / 167 x 81 x 6 cm with frame

Oliver Osborne
Der Tegernseer Bauernjunge (after August Macke), 2026
Oil and acrylic on herringbone linen
80 x 45 x 3 cm / 89 x 54 x 6 cm with frame

Oliver Osborne
The Sleeping Guard VI, 2026
Oil and acrylic on herringbone linen
35 x 30 x 3 cm / 44 x 39 x 6 cm with frame

Oliver Osborne
Michel Majerus (from the Albrecht Fuchs photograph) II, 2026
Oil and acrylic on herringbone linen
40 x 35 x 3 cm / 49 x 44 x 6 cm with frame

Oliver Osborne
Velázquez Boy II, 2026
Oil and acrylic on herringbone linen
23 x 18 x 3 cm / 32 x 29 x 6 cm with frame

Filippino Lippi’s Self-Portrait, Alfie, and Leaves, 2026
Pencil and chalk on paper
36,5 x 30 cm with frame

Oliver Osborne (b. 1985, Edinburgh, Scotland) lives and works in Berlin. Encompassing both figuration and abstraction, the artist uses repetition, as well as tweaks in composition and chiaroscuro, to excavate new images from sustained, often art historical fixations. In this sense Osborne explores painting’s malleability over time, as well as its relationship to the personal– his subjects range from recognisably appropriated figures of portraiture to his own family.
Spanning such variations as silk-screen, monochromatic abstraction and photorealistic oil painting, the artist’s practice is never constrained. And although he may paint a singular subject multiple times, each rendition is never the same.

Selected solo exhibitions include: Der Tegernseer Bauernjunge, Paulina Caspari, Munich, Germany, The Sleeping Guard, ICA Milano, Italy (2025), Ooh!, Union Pacific, London, UK (2025), Comic Sans, Francis Irv, New York, US (2025), Botticelli, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin (2024) Manganese Blue, Galeria Pelaires, Palma de Mallorca (2023) Recent Painting, Tanya Leighton, Los Angeles (2023), Mantegna’s Dead Christ, Union Pacific, London (2022), Portrait of a Fat Man for Düsseldorf, JVDW, Düsseldorf, Germany (2022), Der Kleine Angsthase, Braunsfelder, Cologne, Germany (2020), Birth, Education, Leisure, Death, Giò Marconi, Milan, Italy (2019) and Bonnie, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany (2018).

Selected group exhibitions include: Oliver Osborne & Shimon Minamikawa, Seishodo THE ROOM, Kyoto (2024), I Would Not Think To Touch The Sky With Two Arms, Paulina Caspari, Munich, Germany (2024), Meet me by the lake, CLEARING, New York (2024), A GENTLE CRUISE, JVDW, Düsseldorf (2024), Nine Oils, Francis Irv, New York (2024) Day by Day, Good Day (curated by Ted Targett), Union Pacific, London (2022), Triple Burner, Union Pacific, London (2021), HEART–100 artists, 1 mission, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany (2020), Editions, Peles Empire, Berlin, Germany (2019), and The Go Between (curated by Eugenio Viola), Museo di Capodimonte, Naples and Sprovieri, Italy (2014), amongst others.

Ausstellungstext (DE)