Rubens Ghenov at Morgan Lehman Gallery
With their graphic lines and bits of printed text, Rubens Ghenov’s abstract paintings have been compared to mid-century book-cover design. They certainly borrow from a modernist aesthetic — think hard-edge abstraction spliced and diced with the language of advertising — but the Brazilian-born Ghenov is also exploring memory and the unconscious with the incorporation of faded images.
Like many of Ghenov’s previous paintings, these new works — displayed in the solo show “Aft Key” at New York’s Morgan Lehman Gallery — were inspired by the late Spanish poet Angelico Morandá. If you haven’t heard of him, it’s because Ghenov made him up. But that doesn’t give his poetry any less credibility in Ghenov’s work.
The ersatz writer’s ideas about the nature of time, existence and sound, for instance, make the paintings far more layered. They are complex aesthetically, too. In these new pieces, Ghenov leaves uncovered swaths of the raw linen on which he paints and employs a photographic transfer technique for the first time.
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