Blessing

The work of the Flemish artist Luc Tuymans is influenced by film, especially by camera techniques like zooming in and out, and cropping the image. The close-up pictures in the works Belly, Nose and Dough have an alienating effect. Tuymans deliberately opts for a detached (clinical) recording and for the sparing use of matt paint. The colours are pale, with little detail, in order to create an atmosphere of quietness and memory. His titles, on the other hand, are concrete and regularly refer to traumatic events in world history. Tuymans paints reminiscent images, both personal and collective. He depicts memories faded and deformed by time. Sometimes, the images seem over-exposed or are reminiscent of a photographic negative. Tuymans calls his paintings ‘authentic forgeries’. The process of refining the visual material takes up a lot of time. Many series of drawings and watercolours precede the final painting, which Tuymans then usually completes in one day.