Adrian Ghenies The Collector
(i)
(ii)
Adrian Ghenie (i) The Collector 1, 2008, oil and acrylic on canvas, The Hall Collection © Adrian Ghenie, courtesy Pace Gallery
(ii) The Collector 2, 2008, oil and acrylic on canvas, Private Collection © Adrian Ghenie, courtesy Pace Gallery
(iii) The Collector 3, 2008, oil on canvas, Private Collection © Adrian Ghenie, courtesy Pace Gallery. Photograph by Tom Barratt, courtesy Pace Gallery
(iv) The present work, The Collector 4, 2008, oil on canvas (iii)
(iv)
One of the most prominent painters practising in contemporary art today, Adrian Ghenie’s visually arresting canvases, drenched and dashed in foods of rich colour, have become an icon of modern painting. The Collector 4, a rare and monumental work executed in 2009, is exemplary of the artist’s adroit mastery of his chosen medium, drawing upon historical and artistic currents from the twentieth century canon to produce visually stirring and psychologically complex images. Housed in the seminal collection of the creative visionary Masamichi Katayama, Founder and Principal of the renowned Tokyo-based interior design practice Wonderwall, this work has never been seen before at auction. Representing Romania at the Venice Biennale in 2015, the artist’s painterly prowess has been heralded internationally, which, combined with the work’s unique provenance and exquisite impactful quality, converge to make The Collector 4 a masterwork in Ghenie’s celebrated oeuvre.
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The frst from the series to be seen at auction, The Collector 4 belongs to a sequence of four works in which Ghenie explores the role of the obsessive collector, focusing particularly on the fgure of Lufwafe commander-in-chief, Hermann Göring. Commenting on his 2008 painting The Collector 2, in which Göring eagerly grasps an artwork in both hands, Ghenie states that the Sturmabteilung-Gruppenführer ‘sacrifced his humanity for his obsession’ (the artist, quoted in Jane Neal, ‘Referencing slapstick cinema, art history and the annals of totalitarianism, Adrian Ghenie’s paintings fnd ways of confronting a ‘century of humiliation’, Art Review, December 2010). Channelling themes of manic desire and malevolence, in The Collector 4 the collector lies in his bed surrounded by paintings, his face bloated and frozen in anguish like a ghoulish death mask. What appears to be a German romantic landscape hangs from a levitating soldier overhead, a small ceiling light illuminating the edges of canvasses and the corners of the dingy room.
18/09/17 16:28