Ghenie ist in erster Linie Maler
Although Ghenie is primarily a painter, his drawings and collages now play a important role in his work and are therefore being presented by the Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett showing their entire development and significance for the first time. The distorted faces in his early pie fight pictures are iconic metaphors for human humiliation and the erasure of individual identity. The technique of figural deconstruction, inspired by Francis Bacon and Willem de Kooning among others, is also used by Ghenie in his collages. In many cases, these form the basis for his paintings. In the charcoal drawings of recent years, Ghenie brings his theme into the present by finding images that express the effects on people of the omnipresent digital media.