Born in 1977 in Romania, where he studied fine art, and today dividing his time between Berlin, Cluj-Napoca and London, Adrian Ghenie has been exhibiting on the international art scene since the age of 30. He possesses a flawless knowledge of art history and history, whose “texture” he seeks to paint, and his baroque oeuvre, with its powerful effects of material and movement, draws upon sombre moments from Europe’s post-war past. Historical figures as well as iconic personalities from art and cultural history haunt the surfaces of Ghenie’s oil paintings, which are executed with a palette knife and stencil, in representations impregnated with a Nietzschean opposition of human archetypes. Adrian Ghenie’s own figure – in several cases appearing in the guise of Van Gogh, whose self-portraits move him deeply – enters into these hybrid compositions, where usurped and transformed identities seem to disintegrate in the folds of history.

Previous exhibitions (selection)

2015
Venice Biennale (Italy)
Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris (France)

2014
CAC – Centro de Art Contemporáneo de Málaga (Spain)

2013
Pace Gallery, New York (United States)