In just a few years the art of Adrian Ghenie has conquered the international stage. After finishing his degree in 2001, the artist began exhibiting frequently in 2006 in Romania, Switzerland, the United States, Germany, Belgium, and Great Britain; his works are now to be found in collections at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. Ghenie, who grew up in Romania under Ceausescu, focuses on exploring the dark aspects of 20th-century European history: power and its abuse in totalitarian political systems. His main interest is in the gap between grand, “objective” history and subjective memory. Using references to art history, and props and sets from film and the Internet he creates mysterious, disturbing, and ambiguous images with continuously surprising references to the present day and his own life. With The Lidless Eye, we are very pleased to be able to offer you a true rarity—the artist’s first-ever edition, with a motif from the Musée d'Orsay that has fascinated Ghenie since his childhood: a late self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh. The Collector's Edition is a two-toned lithograph on premium satin art paper. The skin is in a light beige, while the hair is in brown. The artist has manually added a black-and-white digital print of an eye to each print, along with elements from colored digital prints. (Upon closer inspection, the eye turns out to be a piranha bite, while the other snippets of digital prints come from treatises on animals.) Each edition is unique—a treasure limited to twenty-five copies, which will stir the blood of every art lover and collector.
