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The clear delineation of the black iPhone’s round edges and the precise rectangular framing of its image-laden screen stand in stark contrast to the painterly treatment of the hands holding the device. With shades of pink, purple, yellow, red, and brown,Adrian Ghenie dissolves their skin into flesh. Particularly at the outlines of the fingers, the motif gives way to the medium of painting as the background’s blue at times overlays the incarnate with quick brushstrokes and the squiggly contours are repeated in a few swift lines on the image ground. “The App 3” provides a distillation of the artist’s engagement with the impact of screen technologies on the contemporary world. After depicting figures from both history and art history in the paintings that garnered him international renown, Ghenie turned to his present during the pandemic, when the liminal state of connection our digital devises offer us grew especially palpable: always being in touch, never touching. As the condition of our time more generally, virtual bonds impact not just our psychological but also our physical disposition, culminating in historically specific postures. The hunched-over screen swiper of the 21st century appears repeatedly in Ghenie’s recent paintings, though sometimes only as fragment, as in the “App” series, from which the artist chose one work for his first TEXTE ZUR KUNST edition. The human silhouettes on the phone’s screen – reminiscent of the grid interface of the dating app Grindr – become a selection of potential connections available at the tip of the thumb.
