VENICE.- As part of the cycle of monographic shows and ‘carte blanche’ dedicated to major contemporary artists, launched in 2012 and alternating with thematic exhibitions of the Pinault Collection, Palazzo Grassi presents Luc Tuymans’ first personal exhibition in Italy.

Curated by Caroline Bourgeois in collaboration with the artist (Mortsel, Belgium, 1958), the show is entitled ‘La Pelle’ (The Skin), after Curzio Malaparte’s 1949 novel. It includes over 80 works from the Pinault Collection, international museums and private collections, and focuses on the artist’s paintings from 1986 to today. The exhibition path is not chronological. It suggests dialogues and comparisons and rather insist on the spatialisation of the artworks.

Considered as one of the most influential painters of the international art scene, Luc Tuymans has been dedicating himself to figurative painting since the mid 1980s and has contributed throughout his career to the rebirth of this medium in contemporary art. His works deal with questions connected to the past and to more recent history and address subjects of our daily lives through a set of images borrowed from the private and public spheres – the press, television, the Internet. The artist renders these images by dissolving them in an unusual and rarefied light; the slight anxiety that emanates from them is able to trigger – according to the artist himself – an ‘authentic forgery’ of reality.

As Caroline Bourgeois states: “Whilst taking inspiration from existing images, Luc Tuymans’ approach to painting has nothing to do with perfect representation, but rather with taking a risk. The artist claims that painting should entail a void, a flaw, and it is in this ‘absence’ that the visitor should rewrite his own version of the story, its narrative. In this sense, his work could be better described as conceptual, rather than figurative. Another fascinating aspect of his work is its being silent: his paintings are often monochromes, with dull shades that range from warmer to colder, with a flattened perspective. He does not intend to take the visitor by the hand, he is asking him to make an effort to come closer; a reflection and a physicality instead”.

The exhibition includes a site-specific artwork, conceived for the atrium of Palazzo Grassi: a marble mosaic of over 80 square meters which reproduces Schwarzheide, an artwork painted in 1986 by the artist. With a title that comes from a German forced-labor camp, the artwork refers to the drawing by a prisoner in the course of his detention period during the Second World War.

The mosaic is the only non-pictorial artwork presented in the exhibition.

Luc Tuymans was born in 1958 in Mortsel, Belgium. He lives and works in Antwerp. Widely credited with having contributed to the revival of painting in the 1990s, Belgian artist Luc Tuymans continues to assert its relevance by addressing a diverse range of topics. His works, based on pre-exisiting imagery, engage with questions of history and its representation and with daily subject matter cast in an unfamiliar light.

Previous recent survey shows of the artist’s work include: ‘The Swamp’ at Reset Gert Robijns, Borgloon, in 2017, ‘Glasses’ at the Museum aan de Stroom (MAS), Antwerp, in 2016 and later presented at the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 2017, ‘Intolerance’ at the Qatar Museums Gallery Al Riwaq, Doha, and ‘Birds of a Feather’ at the Talbot Rice Gallery University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, in 2015, ‘Nice. Luc Tuymans’ at the Menil Collection, Houston, in 2013.

Luc Tuymans has also curated various group exhibitions: ‘Sanguine – Luc Tuymans on Baroque’ at the Contemporary Art Museum of Antwerp, Antwerp, and then at the Fondazione Prada, Milan, in 2018, ‘Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans’ at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and ‘The Gap: Selected Abstract Art from Belgium’ at the Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, London, and later at the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Antwerp, in 2016, ‘Constable, Delacroix, Friedrich, Goya. A Shock to the Senses’ at Albertinum, Dresden, in 2013, ‘A Vision of Central Europe’ at Groeninge Museum, Brugge Centraal, Bruges, in 2010 and ‘The State of Things: Brussels/Beijing’ at Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, which traveled to the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, in 2009.

The exhibition ‘La Pelle’ at Palazzo Grassi is his first personal exhibition in Italy to date.