Battleground Studio: Adrian Ghenie – Arbeiten auf Papier

In the organizer's words:

Adrian Ghenie (*1977 in Romania) is one of the most successful artists of his generation. He is interested in the ideologies and catastrophes of the 20th century, which the artist himself describes as an era of "humiliation". In the gloomy setting of his paintings, whose motifs are often taken from art history, the deformed figures reflect the physical and psychological injuries caused by dictatorships and wars in surprising constellations.

Although Ghenie is primarily a painter, his drawings and collages now play a central role in his work and are therefore being presented for the first time by the Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett in their entire development and significance. The disfigured faces in the early Tortenschlacht paintings are iconic metaphors for human humiliation and the erasure of individual identity. Ghenie also uses figurative alienation, inspired by Francis Bacon and Willem de Kooning among others, in his collages. In many cases, these form the basis for his paintings. In the charcoal drawings of recent years, Ghenie brings his theme into the present by finding appropriate images for the effects of the omnipresent digital media on people.

Especially for the exhibition in Dresden, Adrian Ghenie was inspired by a drawing of a "war casualty" by Otto Dix from the museum's collection to create a group of large-format charcoal works.