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Event Planning Guide

Luc Tuymans

Event:	Luc Tuymans Experience the work of Belgian contemporary artist Luc Tuymans in his first U.S. retrospective-and the most comprehensive presentation of his art to date. Jointly organized by the Wexner Center and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the exhibition spans every phase of the artistÕs career and features more than 70 key paintings from 1978 to the present. It premieres at the Wexner Center in September and will then be shown at SFMOMA, before touring to the Dallas Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels. Luc Tuymans (b. 1958) is considered one of the most significant European painters of his generation, and he has been an enduring influence on younger and emerging artists. Born and raised in Antwerp, where he lives and works, Tuymans is an inheritor to the vast tradition of Northern European painting and draws on this heritage in his work. At the same time, as a child of the 1950s and 1960s, he is deeply interested in and understandably influenced by photography, television, and cinema. Also interested in the lingering effects of World War II on the lives of Europeans, he frequently explores issues of history and memory. His distinctive compositions make ingenious use of cropping, close-ups, framing, and sequencing, offering fresh perspectives on the medium of painting, as well as larger cultural issues. TuymansÕs paintings might initially suggest relatively innocuous depictions of everyday life, but there is almost always another meaning lurking beneath the surface. The artistÕs more recent work addresses the postcolonial situation in the Congo and the dramatic turn of world events after 9/11; these series have led Tuymans to a sustained investigation of the realms of the pathological and the conspiratorial. Luc Tuymans fills all the Wexner Center's galleries and highlights the fluid progression of the artist's work. Because his career began with filmmaking, Tuymans's painting approach often suggests montage, as one image links to another, and additional meaning is conveyed by the pieces' adjacency. The retrospective reunites paintings in the groupings originally set out by the artist and so conveys the original dialogue among the works. The presentation also demonstrates how Tuymans's tendency to work in suites and at an ever-larger scale align his work with current installation and site-specific art.
Date and time:	November 1, 2009 11:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Location:	Wexner Center Galleries
Contact:	Ticket Office
Phone Number:	614-292-3535
Event category:	Wexner Center
Event Type:	Exhibit

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