Transylvanian artist revives Haunch of Venison

It was going to take something pretty impressive to re-open the newly renovated space of London's Haunch of Venison gallery, at 6 Haunch of Venison Yard, bringing the gallery back to its original home after a period in temporary accommodation, and haven't they done well.

After the abrupt departure of founding directors Graham Southern and Harry Blain last summer, the gallery has reinvented itself and is setting out to prove to the art world (which has all but snubbed it since its sale to Christies in 2007) that its programme is back on track.

The spic-and-span new space, hosts a solo exhibition of the 36-year-old Romanian artist Adrian Ghenie's paintings for its debut show. The huge, bright rooms, high ceilings and white walls provide the perfect backdrop for his canvasses which immediately command your attention.

Big, fat, blobs; smears of paint so thick they rise a good half inch from the surface of the canvas abound. Ghenie cakes the paint onto the canvas. His work deals with difficult subjects: memory, history, Nazi experiments and call to mind the work of Francis Bacon.

The paintings are scary - Dr Josef (2011), for example, has no eyes, in Untitled (2007) a set of teeth sit alone on a shelf, and the monkey in The Hunted (2011) looks like it might just jump out of the canvas and attack - this world is strange, unnerving and very threatening.

He's interested in eugenics, Darwinism, nuclear testing and morality, or the lack of it, in the modern age. The paintings suggest a reality where genetic manipulation has gone wrong, a reference and warning to the way medical theories have historically provided the justification for horrific acts.

It's not exactly light viewing, but, this exhibition will get you thinking, and there is something incredibly satisfying about getting up close and personal with the paintings to see the way he has splodged the paint onto the canvas with a spatula in one area, then scraped it back off again in another.

Ghenie, who’s in his thirties, is one of the youngest artists ever to be shown by Haunch of Venison. He’s featured in Phaidon’s excellent Vitamin P2 - New Perspectives in Painting which is published next month. The show opens on Thursday, September 8 and only runs until October. Check it out while you can because miss this, miss out.