Luc Tuymans

Luc Tuymans by Dexter, Emma. paperback edition. ISBN: 9781854375032.

Belgian artist Luc Tuymans (b. 1958) has been a primary force in reenergizing painting over the past 15 years, creating a varied and remarkable body of work. His paintings deal with complex subjects such as Christs passion and the Holocaust, as well as child abuse and Belgian colonialism in the Congo. Using a restricted palette of bleached-out colors and giving his paintings a seemingly aged, cracked patina, Tuymans imbues everyday objects with a sense of impending menace, hinting at terrors lurking beneath the surface. He has been described by one critic as "the Polanski of contemporary painting...looking through the lens that isolates him from a terrible world which is entirely his own." Accompanying a major retrospective at Tate Modern in London, this fully illustrated book, which includes an interview with Tuymans, is the most up-to-date survey of one of our most important living artists. AUTHOR BIO: Emma Dexter is a curator at Tate Modern and the editor of Cruel and Tender: Photography and the Real. Julian Heynen is a curator at K21 in Düsseldorf.