Palazzo Grassi
Luc Tuymans – La Pelle
At Palazzo Grassi, the first exhibition in Italy of Luc Tuymans,
entitled La Pelle – The Skin - until
January 6, is part of the cycle of monographic shows dedicated to major
contemporary artists, alternating with thematic exhibitions of the Pinault Collection. Curated by Caroline Bourgeois in collaboration
with the artist (Mortsel, Belgium,
1958), the show is entitled after Curzio
Malaparte’s 1949 novel. It includes over 80 works from the Pinault
Collection, international museums and private collections, and focuses on the
artist’s paintings from 1986 to today and suggests dialogues and comparisons
and rather insist on the spatialisation of the artworks.
Luc Tuymans – Schwarzheide – 2019
site-specific marble
mosaic
The artwork painted in 1986 by
the artist, the title Schwarzheide comes from a German
forced-labor camp and it refers to the drawing by a prisoner in the
course of his detention period during the Second
World War. The mosaic is the only non-pictorial artwork presented in the
exhibition.
Luc Tuymans
is considered as one of the most influential painters of the international art
scene, he has been dedicating himself to figurative painting since the mid
1980s and has contributed throughout his career to the rebirth of this medium
in contemporary art. His works deals with questions connected to the past and to
more recent history and address subjects of our daily lives through a set of
images borrowed from the private and public spheres – the press, television,
the Internet. The artist renders these images by dissolving them in an unusual
and rarefied light; the slight anxiety that emanates from them is able to
trigger – according to the artist himself – an ‘authentic forgery of
reality.
Luc Tuymans –
Me – 2011
Mountains – 2016
Body - 1990
“Whilst taking inspiration from existing images, Luc Tuymans’ approach
to painting has nothing to do with perfect representation, but rather with
taking a risk. The artist claims that painting should entail a void, a flaw,
and it is in this ‘absence' that the visitor should rewrite his own version of
the story, its narrative. In this sense, his work could be better described as
conceptual, rather than figurative. Another fascinating aspect of his work is
its being silent: his paintings are often monochromes, with dull shades that
range from warmer to colder, with a flattened perspective. He does not intend
to take the visitor by the hand, he is asking him to make an effort to come
closer; a reflection and a physicality instead”.
Caroline Bourgeois
Caroline Bourgeois
Caroline Bourgeois and Luc
Tuymans
Our New Quarters – 1986
A Flemish Intellectual – 1995
Disenchantment – 1990
K – 2017
Rearview Mirror - 1986
Orange Red Brown - 2015
Isabel – 2015
The Shore - 2014