Ablaze in visceral hues, haunting chiaroscuro tones and formidable gestural brushstrokes, Adrian Ghenie’s The Trip from 2016 is a singular magisterial treatise on art, history, and the role of art in history. Eyes piercingly bloodshot, an aged Pablo Picasso poses before crumbling ruins – a wall split asunder by a devastatingly brilliant deluge of crimson, turquoise and lavender tones that comprise the flaming pearlescent sky. Clad in a thick belted coat with his hands in his pockets, Picasso’s attire and stance in the present work instantly recalls the famous photo of the Spanish artist taken in his Parisian studio at the end of the Second World War. When the photo emerged in 1944, a few years after Picasso had painted Guernica in 1937, his hero status was sealed: the great artist had endured wartime hardships (the photo features a woodstove that could not be lit during the war) and had persisted in making art. Earlier in 1937, commissioned by the Spanish Republican government, Picasso created the monumental Guernica in response to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy’s bombing of Guernica in the same year. Upon its completion, Guernica not only went on to be hailed as the greatest and most powerful anti-war painting in history but also played a critical role in international politics in the ensuing years, in which the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War and the Cold War transpired. Titled The Trip, the present work reimagines a scene where an aged Picasso finally takes a journey to visit Guernica; in reality, having last visited Spain in 1934, Picasso painted Guernica in his home in Paris in 1937 and never returned to his home country. In Ghenie’s imagined tableau, Picasso faces his reckoning, obliged to confront the full impact of the trauma and horror of the atrocity he depicted decades ago.

Throughout his oeuvre, Ghenie has constructed a rigorous dialogue with both art history and contemporary global history, frequently contending directly with the darkest chapters of human history – “I’m fascinated by Nazi Germany” he has proclaimed (Adrian Ghenie in conversation with Michael Peppiatt in: Juerg Judin, Ed., Adrian Ghenie Paintings 2014-19, Ostfildern 2020, p. 122). Born in Romania in 1977, Ghenie grew up under Nicolae Ceaușescu’s repressive communist regime. Today, he lives and works in Berlin – a city laden with the complexities of its own fraught and fractured past. Through his practice, Ghenie seeks to address how the events in recent history – particularly those of the troubled Twentieth Century – infiltrate, impact and haunt the present. “I’m not a history painter,” he explains, “but I am fascinated by what happened in the twentieth century and how it continues to shape today. I don’t feel any obligation to tell this to the world, but for me the twentieth century was a century of humiliation – and through my painting, I’m still trying to understand this” (the artist cited in Jane Neal, ‘Referencing slapstick cinema, art history and the annals of totalitarianism, Adrian Ghenie’s paintings find a way of confronting a “century of humiliation,”’ Art Review, December 2010, online).

Ghenie has garnered international acclaim for his visceral pictorial language and psychologically charged paintings, which address themes of malevolence, totalitarianism, dictatorship and the volatility of human nature. As the artist explains, “We inevitably live in a post-WWII epoch, which means that we constantly have to look back to that watershed moment in order to understand our present condition” (Ibid., p. 49). In his works, pigment is applied directly onto the canvas to create a complex composition where colours forge an intricate and impasto amalgam of ambivalent sensations, mixed messages and unsettling undertones. His meticulous build-up of pigment forms a compelling allegory for the layers of temporality, perception and reality that accumulate over time, spilling over one another ad infinitum. Behind Ghenie’s expressive and energetic strokes of paint lies an empty space of solitude, which speaks to the frailty of recollection, and the transience and inadequacies of mortal existence.

Demonstrating Ghenie’s post-modern fluency as a painter, the dense and complex surface of The Trip alludes to an array of sources ranging from the chiaroscuro of Renaissance painting to the raw psychological intensity of Francis Bacon’s portraiture to the deft manipulations of the painted surface in Gerhard Richter’s practice that simultaneously create, and shatter, illusory space. “On one hand,” states Ghenie, “I work on an image in an almost classical vein: composition, figuration, use of light. On the other hand, I do not refrain from resorting to all kinds of idioms, such as the surrealist principle of association or the abstract experiments which foreground texture and surface” (the artist cited in conversation with Magda Radu, in: ‘Adrian Ghenie: Rise & Fall’, Flash Art, November-December 2009, p. 49). The present painting further recalls, in palette and in the melee of swirling colour and form, Wasily Kandinsky’s Composition VI from 1913. Through Ghenie’s signature conflation of abstraction and figuration, alongside his gestural style and tactile application of paint, The Trip feels imbued with a sense of uncertainty: as if in flux, the painting becomes evocative of the plasticity of time and the fallibility of memory. An extraordinary composite of the historical and the personal, the real and the imagined, the ancient and the contemporary, such resonating elements are exulted in The Trip.

「對於那些藝術史上吸引著我的東西，我想作出個人的回應。」

亞德里安．格尼

亞德里安．格尼2016年的作品《旅程》運用大膽炙熱的色調，明暗對比令人一見難忘，而且筆觸充滿力量及動感。畫中年老的巴布羅．畢加索（Pablo Picasso）眼神銳利同時滿佈血絲，站在搖搖欲墜的廢墟前—— 鮮艷奪目的赤紅、藍綠及薰衣草紫，滿溢在燃燒著而帶有珠光色調的天空中，色彩彷彿要劈開老人身後的牆。厚實的皮帶緊扣著畢加索的大衣，他本人雙手插袋，這樣的衣著及站姿，令人馬上想起這位西班牙藝術家一幅第二次世界大戰後期在他巴黎的工作室所拍的照片。當這張照片在1944年公諸於世時，已是畢加索創作出《格爾尼卡》（1937）之後的數年，當時他已成就斐然，備受世人仰慕。這位偉大的藝術家經歷過殘酷的戰爭（照片中的柴火爐在戰爭期間被禁止點燃），依然堅持創作藝術。在1937年初，畢加索受到西班牙第二共和國所託而創作了《格爾尼卡》，回應納粹德國及法西斯意大利在1937年對格爾尼卡的炮彈攻擊。這幅作品完成的時候，《格爾尼卡》不但被譽為歷史上最偉大、最有力的反戰畫作，它在往後的幾年間更在國際政治上扮演了重要的角色，見證著西班牙內戰、第二次世界大戰及冷戰的發生。本作想像年老的畢加索終於踏上拜訪格爾尼卡的旅程，因而得名為《旅程》。在現實中，畢加索最後一次到西班牙是在1934年，他於1937年在巴黎的家中繪畫出《格爾尼卡》，之後再也沒有回到他的祖國。在格尼想像的場景中，畢加索面對他的現實，直視他自己所描繪的暴行，以及它帶來的創傷及恐懼。

在他的作品中，格尼為藝術歷史及當代的全球歷史，建構了一種場嚴謹的對話，他經常直接地處理人類歷史中最黑暗的章節——他曾表明：「我為納粹德國而著迷」（亞德里安．格尼，與邁克·佩皮亞特對談，載於朱爾．朱丁編，《亞德里安．格尼畫作，2014至19》，奧斯特菲爾登，2020年，頁122）。1977年在羅馬尼亞出生的格尼，在尼古拉．壽西斯古壓抑的共產政權下成長。他現時在柏林居住及工作，而柏林也是一個因傷痕累累而破碎的過往而非常複雜的城市。在他的創作中，格尼想要探討近代歷史——特別是令人苦惱的二十世紀——如何滲透、影響及纏繞著「現在」。格尼解釋道：「我並不是一個歷史畫家，但我對二十世紀所發生的事，以及它們如何持續地塑造現在很感興趣。我沒有覺得自己有義務要宣揚這個訊息，但對我而言，二十世紀是一個充滿屈辱的時代，我還在嘗試透過我的畫作了解這件事。」（亞德里安．格尼，引述自簡·尼爾撰，〈參與了鬧劇、藝術歷史及極權主義史官，亞德里安．格尼從畫作中找到面對「屈辱世紀」的方法〉，《藝術評論》，2010年12月，網上資源）

格尼獲得國際藝術界好評，原因在於他那發自內心的繪畫詞彙，以及有著深層心理意味的畫面。他的作品經常探討男性暴力、極權主義、獨裁主義及人性的變幻無常等主題。藝術家解釋：「我們無可避免地生活於後二次世界大戰的時代，這代表著我們時常要回看那個歷史的分水嶺，才可以了解我們的現況」（同上，頁49）。格尼直接將顏料塗抹在畫布上，以色彩組成一種厚重而精細的結構，當中包含著各種相互矛盾的觀感、錯綜複雜的訊息及令人不安的基調，形成一種複雜的構圖。他細緻地堆疊的顏色，一層又一層，有如時間性、感官與現實之間，隨時間累積而無窮無盡地互相糾纏的關係，展現了一個引人入勝的象徵故事。在格尼感情豐富而充滿生命力的筆觸背後，其實有著一種孤獨的留白，訴說著回憶的脆弱，以及生命存在的短暫性和不足。

­­­­­­《旅程》稠密而複雜的表面質感，讓人聯想起各式各樣的藝術風格，包括文藝復興畫作中的明暗對比、弗朗西斯・培根肖像畫中強烈的心理張力，甚至是格哈德．里希特那種讓作品表面看起來像是同時在創作及粉碎虛幻空間的巧妙處理手法，充份地展示了格尼作為畫家對後現代藝術手法的精湛掌控。格尼表示：「一方面，我在構圖、造型及光線運用上，以近乎古典的風格處理影像。而另一方面，我亦不抗拒利用其他藝術手法，比如超現實主義的聯想，或者強調質感及表面的抽象派實驗。」（亞德里安．格尼，引述自與瑪格達．拉杜對談，載於〈亞德里安．格尼：崛起與隕落〉，《快閃藝術》，2009年11月至12月，頁49）本作在色調的運用，及各種互相纏繞交戰的色彩與構圖中，亦令人想起1913年瓦西里·康丁斯基的《第六號構圖》。格尼以揉合抽象與表現的標誌性手法，配合充滿動感的風格和精妙的筆觸，令《旅程》有著一種神秘的不確定性——畫作彷彿在不停變化，讓人想起時間的可塑性和回憶的不可靠。《旅程》融匯歷史與個人、真實與想像、古代與現代，並強調了這些元素互相產生的共鳴，效果非同凡響，令人難忘。