Adrian Ghenie

Galerie Hussenot, Paris
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Paris, Galerie Hussenot, Days Become Night: Adrian Ghenie, Serban Savu, Ciprian Muresan, 2008

Magda Radu, "Adrian Ghenie: Rise & Fall", Flash Art, November-December 2009, p. 51, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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Executed in 2008, Hunger stands at an important crossroad in Adrian Ghenie’s remarkable practice. Before 2007, Ghenie’s paintings were entirely black and white, a feature aimed at focussing on the aspect of non-presence between two ambivalent notions: fact and subjective memory. The artist’s gradual shift to colour has allowed him to explore a broader range of emotions. The palette of khaki hues brought forward in Hunger permeates the room with a sense of nostalgia, destitution and austerity and marks a shift from grey scale tones into other hues.  

Born and raised in Romania and now working in Berlin, Ghenie’s commitment to figuration can be traced back to the influences of East-German painting from Dresden and Leipzig as well as Socialist Realism. Having grown up under a communist regime, he admits that having experienced life under totalitarianism at an early age still marks his work in a subliminal way. In Hunger, the man depicted in the picture, perhaps a Soviet soldier, brings food to his mouth so savagely that the melee seems to blur the image and erode his features, delivering an outstandingly powerful painterly effect. Characteristic of Ghenie’s masterful treatment of his medium, the figure is first carefully constructed then the oil is scraped off and smeared in a manner reminiscent of Francis Bacon’s brutal approach to portraiture. The blended texture of the background, which appears out of focus, heightens the overall cinematic quality of the scene: “If you look at my works, there is a filmic quality in all of them. […] The film has provided the most important ingredient of my visual background. 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. For me, the genius of cinema resides in its capacity to project an illusion” (Adrian Ghenie quoted in: Magda Radu, “Adrian Ghenie: Rise and Fall”, Flash Art, n. 269, November-December 2009, online resource).

Abraded, scuffed, its edges softened, Ghenie’s compelling portrait of hunger delivers unsettling facts with sincerity, integrity, and visceral power. It is this ability to capture such raw emotion that has made Ghenie one of the most important contributors in the return of figurative painting.