Pace London is delighted to present Golems, an exhibition of new works by the Romanian artist Adrian Ghenie. Adrian Ghenie is one of the most talented figurative painters working today. 

Golems features nine oil on linen paintings, and a large site-specific installation that have occupied the artist’s practice between 2013 and 2014. 

The exhibition illustrates Ghenie’s tendency to question the values of Old Europe, investigating the position of the intellectual within society’s conscience. Golems continues the artist’s exploration of political extremism, philosophical scepticism, and scientific research. 

In Jewish culture, a golem is an anthropomorphic creature, endowed with mystical powers, often seeking to carry terrible deeds. The word was used to mean an amorphous, unformed terracotta or clay figure in religious psalms and medieval texts*. For Ghenie, the golem is both a metaphor for modern artificiality and vanity. In these new paintings and more specifically through the figure of the English naturalist and geologist Charles Darwin, Ghenie seeks to challenge the obvious, and thoroughly investigate the environment in which radical ideas emerge. 

The Darwin Room, presented in a site-specific chamber within the gallery space, features meticulously sourced eighteenth and nineteenth century panelling, floor boards and furniture, juxtaposed with contemporary items notably a plastic chair, a recurrent signifier in many of Ghenie’s paintings. Illumination comes from the light of the internal ‘window,’ a symbolic gesture to the post-enlightenment thinking. The dark passage of the installation creates a boundary, separating the present day gallery environment from the sacred space in which the academic contemplation takes shape. 

*image (left)
courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery