Morgan Lehman is pleased to present the exhibition An Unevening Raga, Accoutrements for an Aposiopesic Précis, vol. 3 by Rubens Ghenov in our project space. This will be Ghenov’s third installment investigating the works and practices of his heteronym, the unpublished poet Angelico Morandá (b. 1940, Spain).
Ghenov’s paintings and sound work in vol. 3 are rooted in the life, work, and devout meditative practice of the fictive poet, who during rituals in the woods, would kneel upright between two trees wearing a shroud that only exposed his ears. To accompany the sounds of his surroundings on his investigative cerebrations, Morandá played self-made loop recordings on a cassette player and held items sourced from Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “The Sect of the Phoenix”.
Like Morandá meditating the difference between the sounds in his environment and the looped recording, each painting’s composition is purposefully asymmetrical. Rather than merely compartmentalizing, the segments of each painting catalog and mix a library of the artist’s psyche. Ghenov also references Chaekkori, a 19th Century Korean (Joseon Dynasty) style of still life painting that used reverse perspective of scholarly accoutrements on bookshelves for the purpose of reflection and contemplation. By intermixing these diverse influences, Ghenov creates a space where fact and fiction comingle and reciprocate each other.
Rubens Ghenov was born in São Paulo, Brazil and immigrated to the US in 1989. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tyler School of Art (1999) and his Master of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design (2010). Ghenov has shown nationally in both solo and group exhibitions at Geoffrey Young Gallery (MA), TSA Brooklyn (NYC), Woodmere Art Museum (PA), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 2013, he co-curated with Dona Nelson the 72nd Annual Juried Exhibition at the Woodmere Art Museum. Ghenov has been featured in Title Magazine, Bomb Magazine, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He currently works in Philadelphia, PA.