New oil paintings and charcoal drawings by famed Romanian artist Adrian Ghenie are on display at the Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery in London. 

The Fear of NOW exhibition, promoted as Ghenie’s “most extensive exhibition in London for almost a decade,” opens today, October 12, and will be on view until December 22. According to the gallery, the show “reflects a key shift in the artist’s themes and practice.”

“Revisiting his enduring interest in portraiture through a group of figurative works, Ghenie records the impact of the Digital Era on the human condition and its physiological effects on the body. In turn, a group of paintings portraying the American icon Marilyn Monroe examines the multifaceted personas of public figures that constitute, what the artist terms, the ‘soup of fame’. Together, these two bodies of work offer a powerful reflection on the transformation of contemporary society,” reads the press release.

The same source says: “The title of the show conveys Ghenie’s apprehension about the role of online culture in today’s social interactions. Abstaining from social media platforms, the artist chooses to place himself ‘out of the social loop’. The Fear of NOW encompasses his relationship with, what he describes as, ‘this new way of communicating which now everybody uses and I’m not in.’”

Adrian Ghenie was born in 1977 in the northern Romanian city of Baia Mare but lives and works in Berlin. He represented Romania at the Venice Biennale in 2015 and had solo exhibitions in 2019 at the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg and the Palazzo Cini in Venice. This year, two site-specific paintings by the Romanian artist were permanently installed in the historic setting of Chiesa della Madonna della Mazza, Palermo, in an independent project curated by Alessandra Borghese. 

His works regularly fetch high sums at international auctions and are part of art collections around the world. Earlier this year, his painting Pie Fight Interior 12 sold for a record of HKD 81.06 million (almost USD 10.4 million) at a Christie's auction in Hong Kong.

irina.marica@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Facebook/Thaddaeus Ropac)