Adrian Ghenie

The gloomy backgrounds and deformed characters in the works of Adrian Ghenie (born 1977) are inspired by the catastrophes of the 20th century, which the artist describes as an era of "humiliation." In his recent series of collages and charcoal drawings, Ghenie shifts his focus to the crises of the 21st century.

Romanian-born, Berlin-based painter Adrian Ghenie (born 1977) merges art historical and contemporary cultural references—the art of Otto Dix and Philip Guston fused with the hybrid, monstrous aliens in the animated series Rick and Morty, for example. The Fear of Now follows this method, interrogating the intrusive influence of technology on everyday life while experimenting with technical processes that evoke both the heavily lined figures of Egon Schiele as well as the sensuality of the Baroque greats.
This catalog presents this new body of oil paintings alongside their corresponding charcoal preparatory drawings. Contorted, amorphous self-portraits rendered in dusky pink, taupe, gray and blue share space with six large-scale paintings of Marilyn Monroe that reconceive Warhol’s iconic silkscreen prints. An interview between the artist and curator Nicholas Cullinan also features.

This book documents a selection of works by artist Adrian Ghenie (born 1977) included in his exhibition The Hooligans. The artist's newest body of work, these nine paintings and three drawings continue Ghenie’s exploration of abstracting figures, layering shapes and gestural painting techniques to create complex images intertwined with art historical narratives. Influenced by Impressionist painters, as well as Turner, Van Gogh and Gauguin, Ghenie’s meditation on the idea of “hooliganism” examines the role of rebellion in an artist’s process, working to reject or ignore traditionalism to create the new. An art historical text by Apsara DiQuinzio traces the trajectory of Ghenie's practice through to today. In her new text, Masha Tupitsyn discusses the concept of the double, looking at its history in philosophy, literature, film and art.

Romanian artist Adrian Ghenie’s (born 1972) latest paintings reference 17th- and 18th-century Dutch paintings from St Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum. This book accompanies his exhibition at the Hermitage.

Particularly since his spectacular exhibition in the Romanian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, Adrian Ghenie (born 1977) has been celebrated as one of the most interesting and unconventional painters of his generation. His works—painted in oils sometimes applied with a palette knife or thrown onto the canvas—have already gained entry into the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern and the Centre Pompidou, and have achieved one auction record after another in the art market. Yet neither Ghenie’s subjects nor his technique cater to public taste. The history of the “century of humiliation” (as Ghenie refers to the 20th century), and its perpetrators and victims, are the predominant sources for his collage-like compositions. These subjects are juxtaposed with heroes such as Van Gogh and Darwin, as well as depictions of himself.

Adrian Ghenie (born 1977) experiments with color in ten paintings inspired by Dutch painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Battle between Carnival and Lent, produced specifically for an exhibition at the Palazzo Cini in Venice. Here, Ghenie’s expressive paintings are presented alongside an essay by art historian Luca Massimo Barbero.

Jungles in Paris features paintings, collages and charcoal drawings by Romanian painter Adrian Ghenie (born 1977). The title is drawn from Henri Rousseau's exhibition at Tate Modern in 2005–6. The tension created by the juxtaposition of urban Paris and the exotic, wild, untethered jungle is the foundation for Ghenie's body of work. The catalog opens with a poem by the Romanian surrealist Ghérasim Luca.