Luc Tuymans: The Arena

Since his appearance at the Venice Biennale in 2001 and at Documenta11, Luc Tuymans has become one of the most important painters of his generation. Since the end of the 1980s the Belgian artist has been developing an extraordinarily complex work, combining the question of representation and representability - inherent in any kind of painting - with a radical charging of pictorial motives. On the basis of a structure that is figurative and drawing-like, and always relying on material that was pre-processed medially (Polaroid shots, newspaper clippings, film stills), he creates calm, small-format pictures of cropped landscapes, objects, architecture and people. In their pastel haziness, often primed with white, these pictures evade concrete designation. This publication to the exhibition, presents a representative selection of Tuymans's works, in addition to a large set of specially created new works; the cycle "Die Zeit" (1988) about the Holocaust, and "Passion" (1999) about the essence of religion.