In the Romanian city of Cluj, a special generation of artists was formed around the turn of the century. Adrian Ghenie became the most influential driver of this group of young painters who denounced the dark past of their country. In his tactile paintings, Ghenie conveys a contemporary vision of major political stories and universal themes such as the abuse of power and oppression, but he also casts light on the individual human struggle. He processes elements from the huge image reservoir of our collective memory into artistic material but employs an alternative setting. Cogitating figures and events that both fascinate and haunt him, he creates a metamorphosis between fact and fiction, and thereby shows that history can be interpreted in more than one way.
