Article: "Venice Biennale Expands Its Scope"
Many of the collectors who did attend walked through the Giardini to the Romanian pavilion, where the Berlin-based painter Adrian Ghenie was showing 19 works dating from 2008-2015 in a presentation titled “Darwin’s Room.” Steeped in European history, blending abstraction with figuration, the rational with the irrational, Mr. Ghenie’s paintings have recently sold for as much as $2.4 million at auction.
But though the show included two new paintings, there were no works for sale in his Venice pavilion. Would-be buyers of Mr. Ghenie’s latest paintings will have to wait until October, when he will have his first show with the Paris dealer Thaddaeus Ropac.
Mr. Ghenie, 37, is astutely aware of the pressures of the art market — auction and dealer sales were valued last year at an all-time high of €51 billion, according to a report published by the European Fine Art Foundation in March.
“The market is so crazy,” said Mr. Ghenie, who creates about 15 paintings a year.
“It’s frustrating to see people make so much money so quickly,” he said. “I feel I’m being speculated. It’s not me. It’s the new art world.”
“But I don’t care,” he said. “I’m keeping these two new works for myself.”
