Luc Tuymans is considered one of the most significant and influential contemporary painters. He is a key artist in a new generation of figurative painters who have continued to explore the medium at a time when many believed it had lost its relevance. In the context of the new information age, many artists felt that painting was a deeply conservative form of expression and did not match the heterogeneous nature of contemporary experience. Luc Tuymans's work specifically addresses the challenge of the inadequacy and belatedness of painting.



Luc Tuymans was born in Antwerp in 1958 and began to study Fine Art in 1976. He concentrated on painting but in the early 1980s lost faith in the medium, gave up for two years and worked as a film maker. When he returned to painting in the mid-1980s, he introduced new techniques such as cropping, close-ups, framing, and sequencing, which remain key elements of his work today.

Luc Tuymans's work is a vast repository of data, drawn from photography, television and film, combining a broad variety of different styles and subjects, which range from major historical events, such as the Holocaust or the politics of the Belgian Congo, to the inconsequential and banal: wallpaper patterns, Christmas decorations and everyday objects. Some paintings seem to represent abstract emotional states, and constitute existential or philosophical responses to the human condition.

Luc Tuymans's range of imagery deliberately resists categorisation. Events and ideas are not expressed explicitly, but implied through subtle hints and allusions, creating an ambiguous collage of disconnected fragments and details. Luc Tuymans believes that representation can only be partial and subjective, and that meaning must be pieced together - like memories - through isolated fragments.Luc Tuymans cultivates an austere momentum and gets more out of less than any painter alive?wrestling down post modern, multi-culti mania he has created an art pared to the bare essentials, like a Balanchine ballet. His deft work is a relief, a tease, an insider's reference point for all that is hip, painterly and politically charged.