Adrian Ghenie: I Have Turned My Only Face...

As a boy, Romanian painter Adrian Ghenie came across a catalogue of Dutch paintings from the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. The book had a profound effect on him, forming the basis for his encyclopaedic knowledge of art history. His latest paintings pay homage to this formative encounter, as presented at his solo exhibition in the White Hall at the Hermitage Museum.In these new paintings the artist has deconstructed the image more than ever before, inviting the viewer to decipher the shifting forms in his sensuously painted canvases. As he writes, “the eyes don’t recognize the figure but the brain knows it is there.” These works continue Ghenie’s sustained engagement with the history of painting, recontextualising the aesthetic strategies of his predecessors, including Henri Rousseau, Vincent van Gogh and Théodore Géricault. 
ISBN 9782910055875. The State Hermitage Museum/Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. hb. 88 pages. 20 colour, 1 b/w ills. 23 x 28 cm.
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