Adrian Ghenie
°1977, Baia Mare (RO) - lives and works in Cluj (RO) and Berlin (DE)
Ghenie’s work is gestural but unconventional in application. Opposed to the traditional tools of a painter, his paintings are the result of palette knifes and stencils that he uses to carve ‘staged accidents’ onto and into his multi-layered painted canvases. The dense, tactile and complex paintings provide a contemporary vision on major political narratives and universal themes of suppression and abuse of power, as well as personal, human struggle. Ghenie obscures historical and political references by melting them together with personal memories, cinematographic references or art historical elements.
His childhood had a profound effect on his painting, in particular the stories his parents told him of their travels across Eastern Europe during the ‘60s and ‘70s. It is not specifically these stories that provide his artistic inspiration, but the differences he finds between his parents’ accounts and his personal interpretations of them. In the broader sense, Ghenie is most intrigued by the difference between fact and memory, exploring these ideas through the means of texture in his paintings.
Adrian Ghenie has had major solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver; S.M.A.K., Ghent; the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; Haunch of Venison, London; and CAC, Malaga. Among others, his work has been included in group exhibitions at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice; Tate Liverpool; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; MAC, Belfast; Prague Biennial; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. He also represented Romania at the Venice Biennale in 2015.
Ghenie’s works are present in numerous international collections, including S.M.A.K., Ghent; SF MoMA, San Francisco; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; CAC, Malaga; and the Francois Pinault Collection.
Adrian Ghenie is represented by the following galleries;
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Pace Gallery, New York / London / Beijing / Menlo Park / Hong Kong
