Adrian Ghenie is a Romanian painter whose work suggests the aftermath of ideological struggles, war, and dictatorship, with allusions to the history of Romania and Europe in general. He takes heavy inspiration from cinema and art history. 

The Sunflowers in 1937, 2014

 "Film has provided the most important ingredient of my visual background," Ghenie explains. "When I paint I have the impression that I am also involved in directing a film... I think consciously and unconsciously I want to master in painting what David Lynch has done in cinema." Beyond Lynch's surreal dramas, the artist also references 1920s silent comedies in his "Pie Fight" series, which corrupts iconic imagery of comedic food fights with bloody smears and fragmented Nazi imagery. 

Pie Fight Study 18/2/12, 2012

World War II is of particular interest to Ghenie. “No discovery is ever good or bad—it depends on how you use it,” he muses on Darwin's theory of natural selection, which inspired Nazi eugenics. He sees the melding of malicious ideologies with bureaucratic objectives as a failure that could happen to any person, but especially to those with a lust for power. We don't see this concept fleshed out in narrative painting formats but rather in emotive still-shots that seem to capture figures at the heights of insanity. I'm fond of the universality of his ideas despite the lack of storytelling.

Pie Fight Interior 8, 2012

Like other artists I've examined on my blog, Ghenie has an impressionist style, and his paintings are very weathered, sculptural, and look like messy palette studies with how paint is haphazardly smeared across them. I enjoy them for their messy patterns, with colorful shapes breaking up the more flat but realistic planes.

Ghenie does appropriate from other artists and his work has often been compared to Francis Bacon's, but I don't feel he reaches the same type of angst that Bacon's work does. Ghenie's work is more colorfully varied and explosive, and leans towards violence more than the quiet, weird, foreboding malice of Bacon's figures. He is also far more cinematic in his compositions, which don't feel idealized and meticulously planned but rather like cropped play-sets. When Ghenie does do subtle, he also paints with much greater realism. I'm a fan of both his styles.

Dada is Dead, 2009