8.07.2010

8.06.2010

The Kids Are Aight.












Adrian Ghenie. Artist. Romanian. Germany.


Pie Fight Study 2.


The Nightmare.


The Kiss.


Dada is Dead.


Pie Fight Study 4.


The collector 3.


Babe in the Woods.


Pie in the Face Study.


Duchamp.


Turning point 1.


It could be anywhere.


Basement Feeling.
Oil on canvas.


Dada is dead.
Acrylic and collage on paper.


Installation view Liverpool Biennale 2008.

... dark, moody, and haunting images evoking of WWII... adore this work.

"When I paint I have the impression that I am also involved in directing a film. Looking at a film made by Lynch or Hitchcock, experiencing the tension and drama of a thriller is at once realistic and beyond the ordinary (...) The cinematic impression is partly given by light and texture. The settings in my aintings seem real; they seem to have suffered a process of erosion, you recognize in them a diversity of textures (...) We inevitably live in a post-WWII epoch, which means that we constantly have to look back to that watershed moment in order to understand our present condition. Rather than historic figures, Hitler and Lenin appear as ghosts in my paintings (...) I am particularly interested in the state of exceptionality that characterizes everyday life in totalitarian regimes, not just Communism. In such circumstances everything is being distorted. However, in terms of subject matter, national-socialism is more present in my work. But there are more subliminal, subterraneous ways in which I was marked, for example, by early memories of my life lived under the Communist regime. The basement of our family home was a space which contained many objects that were discarded, and this space represented for me the true receptacle of personal memories. The painting Basement Feeling (2007) is one of the few autobiographic works that captures this melancholic encounter with my past."
Read more of the FlashArt interview with Adrien HERE.