Luc Tuymans was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1958 and began studying Fine Art in 1978.
In 1980 he lost faith in painting and spent two years working with a film maker and producing his own short, experimental films.
When he returned to painting he incorporated many of the techniques he had used in film making, such as close ups, cropping and framing in his images.
Photographs, films and television form an important part of Tuymans’ source material;
“For my generation, television is very important. there’s a huge amount of visual information which can never be experienced but which can be seen and it’s impact is enormous […]One can only make bits of images. Existence looks edited.” Loock(2003)pg12
Tuymans’ subjects range from the deeply political, the holocaust, events in the Belgian Congo, to everyday, plates, lamps and wrapping paper.
“Tuymans’ range of imagery deliberately resists categorisation. Events and ideas are not expressed explicitly, but implied through subtle hints and allusions creating an ambiguous collage of disconnected fragments and details.” Tate website
He says;
“Representation can only be partial and subjective, and meaning must be pieced together, like memories, through isolated fragments.”Tate
Tuymans had realised very early in his career that to produce purely original work is almost impossible.
“The idea of the original faded away and after a short crisis that gave me a new idea; all you can do is make an authentic forgery. I wanted the paintings to look old[…]because they are about memory.”
Loock(2003)pg8
Tuymans is very concerned with memory. In an interview he gave for an exhibition at the Tate Modern in 2004 he says;
“Its more about memory and mimicry, about constructing what might have happened […] you also have to dream history.”
Ulrich Loock (2003). Luc Tuynans. 2nd ed. London: Phaidon Press Ltd. 8-12.
www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/luc-tuymans
