Adrian Ghenie
The young Romanian artist was the creator of one of this year’s most appreciated pavilions. He represents his home country in Darwin’s room, a veritable dive into painting, history and art history. Adrian Ghenie (b. 1977) has been widely acclaimed since he joined the prestigious Pace Gallery in 2011. Driven by one of the most respected galleries in the world, he hit the secondary market the same year1. The ball started rolling… his powerful paintings immediately captured the attention of wealthy collectors, and a small canvas titled Swimming Pool (less than 50 x 50 cm) doubled its estimate selling for $22,500. The following year, in 2012, he exhibited at the Contemporary Art Museum in Denver, the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence and the Kunsthalle Műcsarnok in Budapest. In 2013, Ghenie crossed the $300,000 threshold2 and the following year he reached $2.4 million against a high estimate of $596,0003. This dramatic rise considerably amplified his artistic notoriety and the secondary market’s excitement pushed him into the limelight as the new idol of Contemporary painting. Today, his work is already in the permanent collections of international institutions such as the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), the SMAK (Ghent), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, among others. But the big news of the year was his collaboration with Thaddaeus Ropac who is hosting a Paris exhibition for the artist in late October 2015, in parallel with the FIAC. The market is looking for tomorrow’s new “Peter DOIG”, and Adrian GHENIE could quickly become a central figure in major Contemporary Art sales.
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