Columbus
Luc Tuymans
Wexner Center for the Arts
The Ohio State University
1871 North High Street
September 17, 2009–January 3, 2010
Dallas Museum of Art
1717 North Harwood
June 6–September 5, 2010
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
151 Third Street
March 17–May 2, 2010
Curated by Madeleine Grynsztejn and Helen Molesworth
After almost twenty-five years of mature production, Luc Tuymans’s reputation precedes him, and the contours of his artistic accomplishment are finally coming into focus. With his muted palette and pared-down painterly vocabulary, the Belgian artist has developed a personal yet remarkably resonant practice that embraces the limits of perception and communication while arguing vehemently for his medium as a vital, critical art form. As large as Tuymans looms in contemporary painting conversations, however, this seventy-work retrospective, which unites long-separated series and is accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Bill Horrigan and Joseph Leo Koerner, among others, is his first substantial American showing, but it promises to make up for lost time with unprecedented depth.