ANTWERP.- Tim Van Laere Gallery in Antwerp presents a solo show with new work by the Romanian artist Adrian Ghenie (°1977, Baia-Mare; lives and works in Cluj and Berlin). The show includes 9 new paintings and three charcoal drawings.
Twelve years ago, in 2008, Ghenie had his first solo show at Tim Van Laere Gallery. Meanwhile, Ghenie has become an international star and a favourite amongst curators, collectors and auction houses. Just two days ago, Sothebys Hong Kong notched the second-highest auction price for Ghenie, when his painting Lidless Eye (2016-18), sold for HK$54.9 million ($7 million).
Ghenie paints sumptuous, almost hallucinatory, large-scale paintings that arouse feelings of vulnerability, frustration or desire. With his complex and layered scenes he challenges us to reflect on the human aspect behind the mystical stories of our history and collective memory.
His profound knowledge of our history manifests itself in various motives: from obscure historical narratives about profane figures to the mythologisation of himself as a person. In the show, he combines aspects from the history of Nazi Germany with Greek mythology in Medusa, 2020, interweaves his own figure with an art historical charge in Self-Portrait with Picassoesque Background, 2020 and reinterprets the work of Henri Rousseau in Untitled (After Henri Rousseau), 2020.
Adrian Ghenie combines different aspects of historical painting techniques. He shows himself a master of baroque chiaroscuro, but also of the expressive use of paint that is characteristic of abstract expressionism. He combines these technical skills with a profound interest in the activation of symbolic meanings behind certain images. Ghenie's interest in the Flemish history of painting leaves several traces in his work in which various references are made to Pieter Breughel De Oude, Jan Van Eyck, Peter Paul Rubens, Paul De Vos and Frans Snyders. He also drew inspiration from the hunting scenes of Flemish baroque painters for Park Scene, 2020 and The Hunter 3, 2020. Ghenie has a great affinity with Antwerp and calls her "the battleground of painting".
Adrian Ghenie has been included in major exhibitions worldwide and he was selected for the Romanian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. The second of his ‘room within a room’ installations, The Darwin Room (2013–14), is currently on view at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, until November 2020; his first, The Dada Room (2010), is now in the permanent collection of S.M.A.K. Ghent. Previous solo exhibitions include the Villa Medici, Rome; CAC Mбlaga; Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest. He has also participated in exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate Liverpool; Palazzo Grassi, Palazzo Cini and Franзois Pinault Foundation, Venice, and Fondation Vincent van Gogh, Arles, among others.
Ghenie’s works are held in important public collections, including Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Long Museum, Shanghai; Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp, and S.M.A.K., Ghent.
