I first thought it was just me, but looking at Issue 01 featured artist Adrian Ghenie’s current show at Thaddaeus Ropac, I felt that the work had opened up. After the post-pandemic works that frequently showed figures stuck to their phones/screens, the Romanian painter stepped outside, bringing to light (quite literally) a whole range of new surroundings, perspectives, and vistas.
And it turns out this wasn’t just me. Reading about the new paintings and charcoal drawings that were “created in his studio in Rome following his recent relocation,” I thought of how this move might’ve felt after years in Berlin. The South-East European in me thought of the nicer weather and brighter light that must’ve influenced not only the way new paintings were approached, but also his life dynamics. I felt that the new works somewhat reveal the excitement of moving to a city rich in history, buzzing with a different lifestyle and mentality, and offering a new world of conceptual, pictorial, and emotive inspiration, the mythic landscape of the Roman Campagna.
But that’s not the whole story. As always, the new drawings and paintings still serve the purpose commonly described as “investigating the possibilities of the medium.” The new surroundings introduce new elements, references, and layouts, which, in combination with historical references (namely Poussin and Lorrain), genres, and occasional self-quotation, result in works that are distinct yet unmistakable. The ancient and ubiquitous landscape of the Appian Way gets investigated beyond its archetypal lyrical beauty by incorporating present-day contexts. The natural scenery, urban environments, and figures are all undergoing Ghenie’s “anti-aesthetic” treatment of contemporary life. They are deconstructed into a mayhem of gestures, an overload of disparate, almost cut-out sections (linking them to his iconic works from about a decade ago), which all coalesce into a readable, psychologically charged imagery beyond the cliché of bright light and shadow play. And in between all of that, regardless of whether done with tones of charcoal or oils on canvas, they hold on to a sense of unseriousness, flirting with caricature while being full-blown paintings. —Saša Bogojev
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