Luc Tuymans

Luc Tuymans (born 1958 in Mortsel, Belgium, lives and works in Antwerp) has been an observer of repeated historical and contemporary manifestations of horror. His paintings show a readiness to deal with these issues, continuing the tradition of Belgian artists such as James Ensor or Léon Spillaert, whose work thrived on the strange and the sinister. Violence and stillness are both the structures underlying Tuymans’ work. His pictures, which include both banal motifs from everyday life and explosive historical themes, can be grasped only with a highly focused gaze that goes beyond surface indistinctness. They reveal a superior, enigmatic level of meaning. His paintings often depict bleached out images that seem to barely surface, resolving and dissolving before the eye, images that are as much felt as seen. Tuymans calls his paintings “immaterial pictures,” which seems to be a completely apt description of the work shown here, Slide II.Sourcing many of his images from film and photography, Tuymans sees celluloid and paint as equally influential. His use of the formal techniques of photography and film – editing, cropping and full page bleeds – promotes an unsettling energy in his work.