Luc Tuymans: Good Luck
Texts by Su Wei, Luc Tuymans, and Éric de Chassey
Widely credited with having contributed to the revival of painting in the 1990s, Belgian painter Luc Tuymans continues to expand our understanding of the medium. Sourcing imagery from books, magazines, films, the internet, and increasingly his own iPhone photos, Tuymans’s unique selection of subject matter reveals his fascination with moral complexities.
Exploring diverse and sensitive topics, many of which include historic references from World War II to more contemporary events such as 9/11, Tuymans presents imagery that at first seems innocuous or approachable but upon deeper inspection can be entirely unsettling. Achieved through his masterful handling of paint, his works are often suggestive of memories or familiar people, places, and things.
The latest in the Spotlight Series, which focuses on new bodies of work by contemporary artists, Tuymans continues to take on increasingly complex subject matters in his primarily muted palette. Published on the occasion of the artist’s 2020 solo exhibition at David Zwirner Hong Kong, this book features an essay by art critic Su Wei, who approaches Tuymans’s newest paintings and how they expand his oeuvre.
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
Artists: Luc Tuymans
Contributors: Éric de Chassey
Designer: Wkshps
Printer: Asia One, Hong Kong
Publication Date: 2020
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 6 ¾ × 9 ½ in | 17.1 × 24.1 cm
Pages: 80
Reproductions: 43 color
ISBN: 9781644230336
Retail: $35 | £25 | €34
Status: Out Of Print
Luc Tuymans
Luc Tuymans (b. 1958, Mortsel) is a Belgian artist who is internationally known for his paintings that engage equally with questions of history and its representation as with quotidian subject matter cast in unfamiliar and eerie light. Painted from preexisting imagery, his works often appear slightly out-of-focus and sparsely colored, like third-degree abstractions from reality. Whereas earlier works were based on magazine pictures, drawings, television footage, and Polaroids, recent source images include material accessed online and the artist’s own iPhone photos, printed out and sometimes re-photographed several times. Since the 1980s, Tuymans has steadily exhibited in the United States, Europe, and abroad, and his work is represented in major museum collections.
Éric de Chassey
Éric de Chassey is the director of the Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, and a professor of modern and contemporary art history at the École normale supérieure in Lyon, France. Between 2009 and 2015, he was the director of the French Academy in Rome, Villa Medici. He has published extensively on American and European art, transatlantic cultural relationships, and the visual culture of the second half of the twentieth century.