Adrian Ghenie- They said this place des not exist




Adrian Ghenie, 2003


 

June 22 – July 28, 2007

 

 

Wohnmaschine is pleased to host Romanian painter Adrian Ghenie’s first solo exhibition in Germany. Adrian Ghenie (born in 1977 in Cluj, Romania) will present new paintings, which deepen his ongoing exploration of the dark corners of European history.

 

At the core of Ghenie’s work lies a sharp awareness of his environs and his culture. Focusing on European history from an Eastern European point of view, his paintings carry a deeply disenchanted feeling with regards to leftovers ideologies or political systems. His subjects are rooted in his experiences growing up in Cluj, one of Eastern Europe’s most cosmopolitan cities, where the traumatic residue of successive colonizers such as the Roman, the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and Soviet empires, remains thickly layered. Ghenie’s somber pictures of mysterious interiors and architectural spaces populated by gloomy silhouettes evoke a feeling of tension and unease. These painterly paintings marry the technical skills of old masters with a thoroughly contemporary rougher edge, while the subtle, droll tenor of the work casts a spell that gently draws in even the unsuspecting viewer.