Luc Tuymans: The Barn

David Zwirner is pleased to present new paintings by Belgian artist Luc Tuymans on view at the gallery’s 537 West 20th Street location in New York. Tuymans has been represented by David Zwirner since 1994; this is the celebrated artist’s seventeenth show with the gallery and his first solo exhibition in the United States since 2016.

The Barn is conceived by Tuymans as the third in a trilogy of exhibitions of his work at David Zwirner—following Good Luck, which was presented in Hong Kong in 2020, and Eternity, held in Paris in 2022—and debuts a group of new, large-scale paintings that together convey a pervasive atmosphere of dissolution.

Image: Installation view, Luc Tuymans: The Barn, David Zwirner, New York, 2023

Location

537 West 20th Street New York New York, 10011

Dates

May 11—July 21, 2023

Gallery Hours

Mon—Fri 10am–6pm

Artist

Luc Tuymans

Smiley, 2022

Oil on linen

80 x 58 inches (203.2 x 147.3 cm)

Luc Tuymans’s deeply resonant compositions insist on the power of images to simultaneously reveal and withhold meaning. Referencing a range of source imagery, the canvases in this exhibition are painted with heightened contrast and an intensified color palette as compared to the artist’s earlier work. The shift in palette reflects the rising sense of sociopolitical uncertainty with a newfound urgency.

Luc Tuymans, Smiley, 2022 (detail)

Luc Tuymans, Smiley, 2022 (detail)

“The tension between technical vision and manual execution has marked Tuymans’s art from its beginning. But his increasingly dominant digital subjects have called for giving entire surfaces a chilly tingle, never allowing any mark to align with whatever it may help to describe.”

—Jarrett Earnest, writer and curator

Installation view, Luc Tuymans: The Barn, David Zwirner, New York, 2023

Installation view, Luc Tuymans: The Barn, David Zwirner, New York, 2023

A key painting in this exhibition refers to an image of popular television personality Bob Ross. Depicted on set for an episode of The Joy of Painting, Ross is shown under bright television lights, his signature hairstyle shown in profile, rendered in abstract forms that emphasize the artificiality of the scene.

Luc Tuymans

Bob, 2022

Oil on linen

77 x 93 1/2 inches (195.6 x 237.5 cm)

Here Tuymans follows the art historical trope of painting the artist at work, as in Diego Velázquez’s painting Las Meninas. In Tuymans’s work, however, the artist is presented as a constructed media figure and a comforting personality that provides a touch of empathy.

The Joy of Painting (still). Photo via YouTube, courtesy of artnet

The Joy of Painting (still). Photo via YouTube, courtesy of artnet

Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656. Collection of Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656. Collection of Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

“The best abstraction is a picture that has an image in it, but [that image] remains fairly mute and inert in such a way that its mere presence becomes a force that compels you to be engaged.… There’s an aspect of Luc’s work where it’s imagery, but it’s also abstract in that same sense where it’s just the perfect image.”

—Kerry James Marshall, artist

Luc Tuymans

The Frame, 2023

Oil on linen

91 x 61 1/2 inches (231.1 x 156.2 cm)

As its title suggests, The Frame depicts an empty frame, which the artist photographed at the Louvre—an inaccessible, unknowable image, leaving only the artifice of display. Radiating light, the painting hints at the sublime—yet what is presented is ultimately an empty void.

Installation view, La Biennale de Montréal, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, 2016. Photo by Daniel Roussel

Installation view, La Biennale de Montréal, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, 2016. Photo by Daniel Roussel

The work also brings to mind a series of paintings the artist debuted at La Biennale de Montréal 2016 at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, which depicted empty frames the artist encountered during the deinstallation of his 2016 show at the Qatar Museums Gallery Al Riwaq in Doha.

Installation view, Luc Tuymans: The Barn, David Zwirner, New York, 2023

Installation view, Luc Tuymans: The Barn, David Zwirner, New York, 2023

“The unities of form and feeling in Tuymans’s work may be shallow—as, under time pressure, he seizes upon whatever resolution of a picture first beckons. But the effect is thrillingly open-ended, as if the work were still in the act of coming to its point, dragooning the eyes and the minds of viewers to that enterprise.”

—Peter Schjeldahl, art critic

Luc Tuymans

The Barn, 2022

Oil on linen

125 7/8 x 100 1/8 inches (319.8 x 254.2 cm)

This exhibition takes its title from a painting of the same name, based on an image the artist found online and photographed with his phone, as indicated by the iPhone photo roll shown along the bottom edge of the work. Painted in vibrant hues, the pastoral scene conveys an undercurrent of darkness.

Luc Tuymans, The Barn, 2022 (detail)

Luc Tuymans, The Barn, 2022 (detail)

“I’ve always had a great distrust against imagery, even my own in a sense, and also a fascination with the idea of power and the imagery it produces.”

—Luc Tuymans

Luc Tuymans

Abe, 2022

Oil on linen

61 x 46 1/4 inches (154.9 x 117.5 cm)

Abe depicts a blurred close-up of the face of Abraham Lincoln from the Disneyland stage show Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. The work depicts Lincoln as a degraded specter, and recalls Tuymans’s past series based on the darker undercurrents of Walt Disney’s legacy, a theme that he focused on in his 2008 show at our New York gallery.

Installation view, Luc Tuymans: Forever, The Management of Magic, David Zwirner, New York, 2008

Installation view, Luc Tuymans: Forever, The Management of Magic, David Zwirner, New York, 2008

Installation view, Luc Tuymans: Forever, The Management of Magic, David Zwirner, New York, 2008

Installation view, Luc Tuymans: Forever, The Management of Magic, David Zwirner, New York, 2008

Installation view, Luc Tuymans: Forever, The Management of Magic, David Zwirner, New York, 2008

Installation view, Luc Tuymans: Forever, The Management of Magic, David Zwirner, New York, 2008

“Rather than present a fixed narrative, Tuymans gives us chapters of a possible story. Within this fragmentation, it is surprising to notice that [the work] has, if not the structure, the components of a dark nineteenth century fairy tale, ‘enlightened’ by Walt Disney’s interpretation.”

—Gerrit Vermeiren, artist, art historian, and writer

Luc Tuymans

Creature, 2023

Oil on linen

110 1/2 x 84 inches (280.7 x 213.4 cm)

“The painter’s far-ranging subject matter can seem perplexing. Yet as it scans the social landscape, Tuymans’s art also continually probes how pictures function in our spectacular culture. Deeply engaged with the nature of visual experience today, it reflects on the ways in which we look at images and on what happens when they, in turn, look back at us.”

—Ralph Rugoff, director, Hayward Gallery

Installation view, Luc Tuymans: The Barn, David Zwirner, New York, 2023

Installation view, Luc Tuymans: The Barn, David Zwirner, New York, 2023

A number of paintings in the exhibition continue Tuymans’s exploration of themes including violence and the undercurrent of fascism. The Flag shows in close-up the shine of a synthetic, plastic flag, like those used in the backdrops of amateur, cheaply made propaganda videos that circulate on the internet.

Luc Tuymans

The Flag, 2023

Oil on linen

62 x 28 inches (157.5 x 71 cm)

The flag shown here is that of the unrecognized pro-Russian separatist Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine, and the flag represents the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. While Tuymans's work has often dealt with historical events of the past, this quietly ominous composition addresses the everyday presence of war and its dissemination through media that are addressed.

Flags of the pro-Russian separatist Donetsk People’s Republic alongside a billboard of the late DPR leader Aleksandr Zakharchenko. Courtesy New Haven Register

Flags of the pro-Russian separatist Donetsk People’s Republic alongside a billboard of the late DPR leader Aleksandr Zakharchenko. Courtesy New Haven Register

“Luc’s paintings call us out on our relative amnesia around important issues. They shame you into looking.”

—Madeleine Grynsztejn, director, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Luc Tuymans

Bell Boy, 2023

Oil on linen

62 x 36 5/8 inches (157.5 x 93 cm)

With similar connotations of fascism or totalitarianism, the present work depicts a figure shown from behind. Whereas the image, drawn from found footage of Dresden, Germany, taken in the late 1930s, is noted in the painting’s title as that of a bell boy, the man’s stance and uniform instead quietly insinuate fascist military posture and garb. The work, both compositionally and thematically, brings to mind earlier paintings by Tuymans, including Zeeofficier (Naval Officer) and De Wandeling (The Walk).

Luc Tuymans, Zeeofficier (Naval Officer), 1978. Collection of Drawing Room, London

Luc Tuymans, Zeeofficier (Naval Officer), 1978. Collection of Drawing Room, London

Luc Tuymans, De Wandeling (The Walk), 1991. Private Collection

Luc Tuymans, De Wandeling (The Walk), 1991. Private Collection

“Tuymans is also supremely conscious that every exhibition involves the construction of a reality. His exhibitions are marked by their response to context, whether it be a reunified Berlin in the nineties, with its ghosts of Nazism and totalitarianism, or New York in the aftermath of 9/11 a decade later. He is notable in the rigor with which he will choose to make or show a particular group of work at a given time, or in a given place.”

—Nicholas Serota, chair, Arts Council England

Luc Tuymans

Blood, 2023

Oil on linen

64 x 99 3/4 inches (162.6 x 253.4 cm)

Blood appears to be a geometric, minimalist composition, but in fact, depicts a scientific diagnostic tool used to test for the presence of hepatitis. Blood brings to mind significant earlier works by the artist, specifically Bloodstains, which depicted blood cells magnified through a microscope, as well as the series Der diagnostische Blick (The Diagnostic View), which included paintings based on images from a medical textbook.

Luc Tuymans, Bloodstains, 1993 (detail). Private Collection

Luc Tuymans, Bloodstains, 1993 (detail). Private Collection

Luc Tuymans, Der diagnostische Blick X, 1992. Private Collection

Luc Tuymans, Der diagnostische Blick X, 1992. Private Collection

“There is an implied violence … but here the violence is also in the crop itself, in what it cuts out and omits.… The almost microscopic approach and subject matter reminds us of the way in which the human body can be atomized, dissected and analyzed in detail, to the point of abstraction.”

—Nicholas Cullinan, director, National Portrait Gallery, London

Luc Tuymans

Vilnius, 2023

Oil on linen

48 x 45 inches (121.9 x 114.3 cm)

Luc Tuymans

Bucha, 2023

Oil on linen

80 x 60 1/2 inches (203.2 x 153.7 cm)

Recent war atrocities are the subject of Bucha, which depicts news footage of high-voltage lamps shining on a place where shallow graves of civilians and prisoners of war were discovered in the Russian-occupied city in Ukraine in 2022. In this ambivalent composition, as in much of Tuymans’s oeuvre, what is being seen remains difficult to identify.

Luc Tuymans, Bucha, 2023 (detail)

Luc Tuymans, Bucha, 2023 (detail)

In Polarisation each of the four canvases present converging red and blue starbursts set against a plain white background that recall such varied points of reference as fireworks, viruses, or even any tricolor national flag. Though abstract, the patterns have tangible meaning: they reproduce a visualization of data devised by Mauro Martino—an Italian artist, designer, and researcher—in collaboration with a team of scholars tracking the polarization of the US Congress over six decades by looking at how likely representatives are to vote alongside or against their own party lines.

Luc Tuymans

Polarisation - Based on a data visualization by Mauro Martino, 2021

Oil on linen in four (4) parts

Part 1: 96 1/2 x 53 3/8 inches (245.2 x 135.5 cm)
Part 2: 96 3/8 x 57 5/8 inches (244.8 x 146.4 cm)
Part 3: 96 3/4 x 62 5/8 inches (245.8 x 159.1 cm)
Part 4: 97 x 60 7/8 inches (246.4 x 154.6 cm)

Martino devised this format as a means of making complex sociological data immediately understandable, compressing a year's worth of congressional votes into a single graphic that succinctly expresses the overall trends and tendencies. From this group, Tuymans selected four consequential years in American politics that span the project: 1951, 1967, 1989, and 2011. The work debuted at our Paris gallery in 2022.

Luc Tuymans, Polarisation - Based on a data visualization by Mauro Martino, 2021 (detail)

Luc Tuymans, Polarisation - Based on a data visualization by Mauro Martino, 2021 (detail)

“In a dual acknowledgement and refusal of painting’s imagined totality, Tuymans turned to the logic of the fragment … [resulting] in an oeuvre that consistently evokes the flickering, disembodied images encountered while surfing a muted television. And like a muted television, Tuymans’s paintings both possess and produce a kind of silence, a demonstrable lack of legibility even, a difficulty that outstrips their subject matter per se.”

—Helen Molesworth, curator and writer

Installation view, Luc Tuymans: The Barn, David Zwirner, New York, 2023

Installation view, Luc Tuymans: The Barn, David Zwirner, New York, 2023

Luc Tuymans: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Volumes 1–3

Surveying nearly five decades of the artist’s work, these three volumes are a testament to Tuymans’s persistent assertion of the relevance and importance of painting in today’s digital world.

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PROGRAM

Luc Tuymans and Helen Molesworth

Inquire about works by Luc Tuymans

An installation view of the exhibition, Luc Tuymans: The Barn, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2023.

An installation view of the exhibition, Luc Tuymans: The Barn, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2023.

An installation view of the exhibition, Luc Tuymans: The Barn, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2023.

An installation view of the exhibition, Luc Tuymans: The Barn, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2023.

An installation view of the exhibition, Luc Tuymans: The Barn, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2023.

An installation view of the exhibition, Luc Tuymans: The Barn, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2023.

An installation view of the exhibition, Luc Tuymans: The Barn, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2023.

An installation view of the exhibition, Luc Tuymans: The Barn, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2023.

Luc Tuymans

Smiley, 2022

Oil on linen

80 x 58 inches (203.2 x 147.3 cm)

Luc Tuymans

Bob, 2022

Oil on linen

77 x 93 1/2 inches (195.6 x 237.5 cm)

Luc Tuymans

The Frame, 2023

Oil on linen

91 x 61 1/2 inches (231.1 x 156.2 cm)

Luc Tuymans

The Barn, 2022

Oil on linen

125 7/8 x 100 1/8 inches (319.8 x 254.2 cm)

Luc Tuymans

Abe, 2022

Oil on linen

61 x 46 1/4 inches (154.9 x 117.5 cm)

Luc Tuymans

Creature, 2023

Oil on linen

110 1/2 x 84 inches (280.7 x 213.4 cm)

Luc Tuymans

The Flag, 2023

Oil on linen

62 x 28 inches (157.5 x 71 cm)

Luc Tuymans

Bell Boy, 2023

Oil on linen

62 x 36 5/8 inches (157.5 x 93 cm)

Luc Tuymans

Vilnius, 2023

Oil on linen

48 x 45 inches (121.9 x 114.3 cm)

Luc Tuymans

Bucha, 2023

Oil on linen

80 x 60 1/2 inches (203.2 x 153.7 cm)

Luc Tuymans

Polarisation - Based on a data visualization by Mauro Martino, 2021

Oil on linen in four (4) parts

Part 1: 96 1/2 x 53 3/8 inches (245.2 x 135.5 cm)
Part 2: 96 3/8 x 57 5/8 inches (244.8 x 146.4 cm)
Part 3: 96 3/4 x 62 5/8 inches (245.8 x 159.1 cm)
Part 4: 97 x 60 7/8 inches (246.4 x 154.6 cm)

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