Luc Tuymans: Downfall
– Rajesh punj

To look at and into a painting of Belgian artist luc tuymans is to encounter the visual world as though born of abstraction. of ice-cream coloured textures that serve to illustrate the banality of brutality, that like his contemporary michaël Borremans, come into contact with the canvas as though an aromatic acid. the act of allowing oneself to stare at a figure silently suffocating, or to look into the corners of an empty interior, that for its title transforms it into an execution room, gaskamer 1986 (that tuymans explains as similar to its history, of it being branded a ‘shower room’ cum gas chamber), can be likened to treading on the graves of the dead – of turning idle curiosity into a perverse act of criminality.


Unlike Borremans, whose paintings involve the ordinary becoming extraordinary, tuymans appropriates images that resonate with the burden of modern history. to paint an anonymous interior is akin to looking into the living room of a show home, for all its triviality, but to recreate a similarly sized space in which hundreds, if not thousands, of men, women, and children, were systemically exterminated, is to aestheticize the greatest emergencies one can imagine of mankind, and to see its architecture as deserving of objective neutrality. that draws attention to the identity of death, as it resurfaces over the walls and floor of an indistinguishable room, as much as it clings to the complexion and clothing of the portraits of politicians and public figures. Which for the opportunity to stand and stare generates a disturbing interest in the macabre majesty of the work, whilst it challenges our understanding of history as a black and white experience that rests entirely in the present past. Intrigued by the persistent strength of images of corrosive and catastrophic events, tuymans’ has always chosen to paint the mystifying emblems of human downfall, as evidence of the corruption of one’s character. With his paintings appearing unnerving for their fragility and fantastic beauty, as they have us all reaching with our eyes further and further into the image, for their disturbing soul.