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Adrian Ghenie, That Moment, 2007, Oil on canvas, 17.5 x 23 cm, © Adrian Ghenie.

History, Trauma of Dictatorship, and Jung: A Daydream

Adrian Ghenie, Secret Nativity, Detail, 2007, Oil on canvas, 14.5 x 23 cm, © Adrian Genie.

Adrian Ghenie, Wasted Generation, 2007, Oil on canvas, 130 x 200 cm, © Adrian Ghenie 2007.

Adrian Ghenie, Untitled, 2007, Oil on canvas, 6.6 x 6.4 cm, © Adrian Ghenie.

Adrian Ghenie, Dutch Interior, 2007, Oil on canvas, 61 x 50 cm, © Adrian Ghenie.

Haunch of Venison
Lessingstrasse 5
+41 43 422 8888
Zurich
Adrian Ghenie:
Shadow of a Daydream
November 15, 2007-January 12, 2008

Shadow of a Daydream is a series of powerful new paintings inspired by the artist's recent residency in Berlin. The works demonstrate Ghenie's fascination for history and the trauma of dictatorship; they also reveal his current preoccupation with the Jungian notion of the "collective unconscious."

Ghenie has dramatically increased the scale of his paintings for this show (some of the works measure over 2x2m), in order to develop and sustain an array of complex compositions peopled with unexpected ensembles of figures, statues, boxes and buildings. Strangely, the eclectic and often bizarre groupings are completely convincing in their present contexts, connected as they are by what Ghenie describes as the 'surrealistic exercise' of daydreaming. In the twilight world of semi-consciousness, a man sits astride a skyscraper; battered wooden boxes overflow with film reels; a gargantuan teddy bear looks on as a man washes his hair; and the Roman marble copy of the original Greek bronze, Discobolus occupies the corner of a couple's basement.

There is a strongly progressive narrative that runs through Ghenie's exhibition; the sources for his images are derived from a combination of his own personal store of memories and from historical books, archives and film - both documentary and fictional. The weaving together of personal histories with collective memories makes for a psychologically disturbing encounter on the part of the viewer, who may experience a sense of unease or an uncanny jolt of recognition as they survey the paintings. According to Jung this is because they are being encouraged to draw from 'the reservoir of the experiences of our species'; Ghenie compares this experience to passing through a series of rooms. The first room, or 'upper level of the subconscious', contains images and offers situations familiar to many, the successive rooms or deep subconscious hold a person's darkest private fears.

While Ghenie may have derived inspiration from the dark times of twentieth Century European history, his attention to detail and ability to create convincingly real interiors for his protagonists finds its roots in his love of Northern European Renaissance painting. The textures of walls, cupboards and floors are carefully observed and faithfully translated by Ghenie; the intimacy of the domestic scenes heightened by the familiar clutter of human detritus. Ghenie was intrigued to discover that the masterpieces of Van Eyck and Van der Weyden are arguably as effective at conveying a convincingly real interior when reproduced in black and white, as they are in their original colour. Indeed Ghenie feels that the vivid use of colour can sometimes mesmerise the eye in one place for too long, thereby lessening the full impact of the composition for the viewer.

Ghenie's own, apparently black and white paintings are actually full of violets, umbers and viridian greens but his careful placing of complementary colours achieves a harmonious arrangement of velvety greys and weighty blacks. The absence of obvious colour allows the viewer to move back and forth across the paintings, affording them the possibility of alighting on the strange surprises emerging from the darkness - scenes that feel latently erotic in some cases, and sinister in others, but always intriguing.

Shadow of a Daydream is Adrian Ghenie's most ambitious and challenging series of works to date.

The artist divides his time between Cluj, Romania, and Berlin, Germany.

Adrian Ghenie, New God's Funeral, 2007, Oil on canvas, 6.9 x 4.7 cm, © Adrian Ghenie.

Adrian Ghenie, A Farewell to the Western World, 2007, Oil on canvas, 25 x 20 cm, © Adrian Ghenie.

Adrian Ghenie, Christmas Eve, 2007, Oil on canvas, 14 x 26 cm.

Adrian Ghenie, Duchamp, 2009, Oil on Canvas, 125 x 105 cm, © Adrian Ghenie.

Adrian Ghenie, Duchamp's Funeral I, 2009, Oil on canvas, 300 x 200 cm, © Adrian Ghenie.

Adrian Ghenie: History and Detritus from the 20th Century in Paint

Adrian Ghenie, NICKELODEON, 2008, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 420 x 240 cm, © Adrian Ghenie.

Adrian Ghenie, Laurel and Hardy, 2008, Oil and Acrylic on canvas, 200 x 85 cm (Laurel), 104 x 200 cm, (Hardy), © Adrian Ghenie.

Haunch of Venison
8 Burlington Gardens
44(0)20 7495 5050
London
Adrian Ghenie
Darkness for an Hour
May 15-July 25, 2009

Darkness for an Hour demonstrates Ghenie's ongoing exploration of the medium of paint, and his enduring fascination with European history, addressed through ideas relating to memory, trauma and extremism.

The sources for Ghenie's images are derived from a combination of his own memories and from historical books, archives and films. While Ghenie often engages with specific and emblematic images and moments in 20th century history — the death of Stalin, the Hollywood comedy stars Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, the art collection amassed by Herman Goering during the second World War, or the infamous Dada fair of 1920 Berlin — his paintings are never prescriptive but rather open to a multitude of possible interpretations.

Figurative imagery is buried within drips and pours of paint, scraped and weathered surfaces, which perhaps represent contrasting states of clarity, fluidity and erosion. Ghenie seems to suggest that history and memory are never fixed, but rather in flux.

Much of Ghenie's new work explores the phenomenon of Dada, as part of an ongoing investigation of a ?history of extremism? and displacement in the 20th century. That many of the leading members of the Dada movement were exiled in America during the second World War, connects this new body of work to earlier themes in Ghenie's oeuvre such as The Flight into Egypt. For example, Ghenie's portrait of Marcel Duchamp renders the iconic artist as a blind old man, an abject, vagrant figure.