“Crib Notes” is a quick-read dossier focused on the artists who ranked on our best-sellers list for ultra-contemporary art in our 2024 Mid-Year Intelligence Report.
Adrian Ghenie is going from strength-to-strength. The artist ranked second in our list of top-sellers (in the ultra-contemporary artists, meaning those born after 1974) and fifth in our list of most bankable artists; In the year prior to the report’s release, he sold 11 of his 16 lots offered at auction (a 69 percent sell-through rate) and built up $5,632,985 in sales. The Uncle (2019) was his biggest sale this year, racking up $3,006,000 at Sotheby’s New York in May 2024.
The Berlin-based artist has been hitting headlines for over a decade for his punchy rise to high auction prices (and a 2023 flipping scandal), but there’s certainly more to come from the Romanian star.
He hosted his first solo exhibition at Galeria Plan B—which he co-founded with Mihai Pop—in 2006, and it wasn’t long before other galleries wanted in on the action. Within five years Gherie was signed with Pace Gallery worldwide. With a subtle sardonic quality, Ghenie’s historical and and cinematic-inspired paintings often have an uneasiness to them. His signature warped figures are created using palette knives and stencils, leading to comparisons with Francis Bacon.
Despite these major successes, he is yet to have a major museum show in either the U.K. or the U.S., and any sense of a “peak” in Ghenie’s career feels a long way off, as he continues to grow in popularity with collectors around the globe.
Adrian Ghenie, Nickelodeon (2008). Courtesy Christie’s Images Ltd. 2016.
Key details: Born in Baia Mare, Romania in 1977. Based in Berlin, Germany.
Galleries representing: Pace Gallery, New York, London, Hong Kong, Seoul, Geneva, Los Angeles, Tokyo. Ghenie’s last solo show with Pace was held at Pace New York in fall 2023. The artist’s first solo exhibition in Asia and his fourth with Pace, “The Hooligans” featured charcoal drawings depicting characters gazing into cell phones, using remote controls—what the artist has called “21st century body language.” The gallery’s New York branch held the first of Ghenie’s Pace solo exhibitions, ‘New Paintings’ in May 2013.
Breakout Moment: Ghenie represented Romania at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. For his exhibition, called “Darwin’s Room,”, curated by Mihai Pop. Ghenie presented three themed rooms. In ‘The Portrait Gallery’ the artist displayed a series of self-portraits in the image of the 19th century naturalist Charles Darwin.
Adrian Ghenie, Rest During the Flight Into Egypt (2016). Courtesy of Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Auction record: HK$81,060,000 ($10,326,246) for Pie Fight Interior 12 (2014) at Christie’s Hong Kong 20th / 21st Century Art Evening Sale, May 26, 2022. The largest of Ghenie’s Pie Fight Interior panels, Pie Fight Interior 12 takes its inspiration from shorts Pie and In the Sweet Pie by the Three Stooges, showing a woman in the foreground attempting to remove pie from her face, in front of a tumultuous backdrop.
Upcoming exhibitions: ‘Adrian Ghenie: Shadow Paintings’ at Albertina, Vienna is inspired by the lost works of Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele. On view until March 2, 2025. Schiele’s works are only known from black-and-white photographs—but come back to life, courtesy of Adrian Ghenie’s hauntingly emphatic artistic abilities. In December, 2024, “Battleground Studio: Adrian Ghenie – Works on Paper” will open at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, a retrospective of more than 50 works on paper by Ghenie, made between 2006 and 2024.
Key Quote:“It’s a waste of time to think of anything outside the next painting. The more you shut up, the better.” (Artnet News, 2022)