Belgian painter Luc Tuymans explores moral complexity through a distinctive figurative style that purposefully withholds a clear narrative. Often using photographs or film stills as source imagery, Tuymans’s muted paintings create a sense of ambiguity akin to a fading memory. This ambiguity is a key point of interest for Tuymans. “If you ask people to remember a painting and a photograph, their description of the photograph is far more accurate than that of the painting,” he has noted, “There is a physical element intertwined with the painting. It shakes loose an emotional element within the viewer.” Layering information through ethereal scenes and signifiers, Tuymans’s works evoke a multitude of feelings rather than tell a single story.

–Ariana Kaye, from the Glenstone Field Guide