Adrian Ghenie

Adrian Ghenie (Romanian, b.1977) is a Contemporary painter known for his multilayered images that take inspiration from news media, classic films, history, and social media. Born in the city of Baia Mare, he studied at the University of Art and Design in Cluj, and moved between there and Berlin, until 2013, when he finally settled in the German capital where he continues to live and work. Many of his pieces explore the traumatic history of dictatorship in Romania, and are often characterized by spontaneous and gestural brushstrokes. The faces in his works are frequently slashed or blurred, and are painted using a palette knife and stencils rather than a paintbrush. His favored subjects include infamous figures of the 20th century, particularly those connected to events of suffering and genocide. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kuns, Ghent, and National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest. His work has also been featured in exhibitions at the Palazzo Grassi, François Pinault Foundation, Venice, the Tate Liverpool, the Prague Biennial, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, among others. Ghenie’s work is held in a number of public collections, including the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst in Antwerp, the SFMOMA, and the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kuns. In 2005, Ghenie co-founded Galeria Plan B, a production and exhibition space for Contemporary Art.