David Zwirner London
2018
Luc Tuymans discussed Andrzej Wróblewski’s (1927–1957) practice at the gallery on the occasion of an exhibition of the Polish artist’s work.
Tuesday, March 20, 6:30 PM
24 Grafton Street, London
Tuymans considers Wróblewski’s work to have significantly influenced his own painting practice—particularly with regard to the depiction of the human figure and negative space. Wróblewski posited the body as a real and complicated subject, while also addressing the limits of its representation.
In 2015, works by Tuymans and Wróblewski (who died a year before Tuymans’s birth) were presented inDE. FI. CIEN. CY, an exhibition at the Drawing Room in London that also included René Daniëls, and had previously been shown at Art Stations Foundation in Poznań in 2014. In an interview with Anda Rottenberg for the publication accompanying the show, Tuymans commented on his and his predecessor’s use of "the empty space, the void." In his catalogue essay, the exhibition’s curator, Ulrich Loock, connects this with the two artists’ approach to figuration, noting "the use of single figures that appear isolated on the picture plane and assume all the wait of the work’s meaning. In Wróblewski’s work from 1955 to 1957 . . . and almost all of Tuymans’s work, these figures are withdrawn from any narrative context."
In 2010, Tuymans included Wróblewski’s work in The Reality of the Lowest Rank: A Vision of Central Europe, a group exhibition he curated that was shown at many cultural venues throughout the city of Bruges.
Read The Guardian's four-star review of the exhibition at David Zwirner.