Adrian Ghenie and the Ceaușescu portrait

From all of the new young European painters that have become relevant in the last decade, the most interesting and prolific one is Adrian Ghenie. He usually creates big paintings where he mixes abstract forms and figurative representation, generally portraying people in bizarre and uncanny contexts and situations. In 2010, he was commissioned to make a portrait of former Romainian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. For this purpose, he based his work on the latest moments of the Ceaușescus, when they were arrested and quickly judged by militars in an unfair trial. This trial was broadcasted all over Romania, in Christmas 1989, and every Romanian then saw on television the murder of their long time dictator and his wife, an image that will live forever in the colective memory of Romania and that has conditioned the perception of the dictator in everyone's mind. Here's a brief interview of Ghenie talking about his painting The Trial, and what interests me the most is the process that the artists uses to create his work (documentation from mass media), and of course the fact that this powerful image has made an impact in that society. Furthermore, I add a fragment of the broadcasted trial of the couple, which is necessary to understand the complete sense of the painting.

More from Adrian Ghenie
http://www.plan-b.ro/index.php?/adrian-ghenie/