Opening on Tuesday, November 24th, the gallery will present new paintings by the Belgian artist Luc Tuymans. The exhibition entitled "Security" is the artist's third solo show in New York.
Luc Tuymans has been recognized as one of Europe's most important painters. Since participating in the 1992 Documenta IX, Tuymans has had solo exhibitions at the De Pont Foundation, Tilburg, the Netherlands; Fundacao de Serralves in Porto, Portugal; University Art Museum, Berkeley; Musee des Beaux Arts, Nantes, France; Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland; Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany; the Renaissance Society, Chicago; and the ICA, London.
The paintings in this body of work focus on the idea of security, an issue that the artist believes will become increasingly important as we move into the new millenium. For Tuymans, security is more about a psychological state than a physical one. Hence the paintings in this series refer to physical situations that suggest a lack of security–such as the painting of a hut structure that becomes more menacing when the viewer realizes it has no windows or doors, or the image of a green orchid, whose aggressive form and artificial color, looks as if it is about to attack the viewer.
As in all his paintings, Tuymans portrays banal moments and objects by balancing an aesthetic indifference with that of stylistic abandon. However, his paintings equivocally embody an aesthetic choice of working within the image-making medium of painting, as a valid form of expression, that still holds relevance today.