adrian ghenie at haunch of venison

The privilege of holding the first show at Haunch of Venison‘s restored and revamped space goes to Adrian Ghenie, a Romanian artist. A modest group of new paintings is supplemented by less successful collage works that are pasted directly on to the gallery walls.

Ghenie takes found images of historical icons and overlaps them with an array of cultural references on moody paint splashed canvases. Often dark and brooding he reflects on good and evil introducing figures like Ceaucescu and Mengele before almost obliterating them behind smears and streaks of multicoloured paint.

He says ‘I am interested in the presence of evil, or more precisely how the possibility for evil is found in every endeavour, even in those scientific projects which set out to benefit mankind.’ In one large-scale work for example Charles Darwin is connected to the Nazis by their search for Aryan perfection. In another deformed dogs scrabble around in the shadow of a nuclear test (we are told) or perhaps it is a post-apocalypic vision.

The works are undeniably eye-catching and the technique impressive but I found the purported links tenuous or opportunistic. The execution did not really reflect what we were told of the thought-process or perhaps they did not engage. The collages I will ignore as a decorative afterthought in order to fill the airy gallery space. Personally I would prefer more clarity in execution and perhaps in the future we could see something rather more special? Not sure really. Opinions welcome.

Haunch of Venison until 8 October 2011