Adrian Ghenie: Roman Campagna Review of his exhibition in Paris

By Catherine Millet 

When much of the painting currently in vogue is "pictorial painting" and, what is more, accompanied by good intentions, it is a pleasure to see that one of the finest painters of his generation, who was the leading figure of the Cluj school, Adrian Ghenie (Romania, 1977), persists in the path of those he calls the "hooligans" of art, who have attacked painting from within, and who, determined to explore the depths, are not afraid of monsters. 

[...] Ghenie has abandoned Hitler or Goering to their fate to focus on the walkers along the Via Appia (he now lives in Rome). They go to admire the funerary stelae or hide behind them to relieve themselves. Some are like molluscs curled up over their food, namely their smartphones. These figures are less caricatures, like the portraits painted previously, and more grotesque; they are hybrid and caught up in the continuum of the surrounding vegetation. [...] I have rarely seen paintings that come so close to the indefinable images of dreams. Perhaps that is why they are so evocative. 

[Translated from French]