By: Luc Tuymans; Gerrit Vermeiren Publisher: David Zwirner Binding: Paperback Label: David Zwirner Number of Pages: 60 Publication Date: October 14, 2005 Release Date: October 14, 2005
Product Description: This exhibition will include 10 new paintings, in which Tuymans puts forth the image of a fragile America and the crumbling state of current affairs. There is a sense of delayed trauma, depicted in flat, muted hues, that shuns the obvious and circumvents easy interpretation. With a similar intensity to the exhibitions Mwana Kitoko, 2000, in which he examined the colonial history of Belgium, and Fortune, 2003, which centered on the effects of images from 9/11, Tuymans offers a critique of America that is intended to be subconsciously constructed. While there is nothing overt or merely symbolic about these paintings, they lay claim to real events, suppressed memories, and, in this case, the reality of our current political dilemma. Incited by war-time musical films from the 1940s, the central concept of the exhibition is a state of confusion derived from inconclusive memories and the dissolution of the familiar. In musicals, the subsequent chaos that is created by dancing (even when carefully choreographed) creates constant, yet dislocated, visual confrontation. For Tuymans, each painting in the exhibition presents a fragmented glimpse of a disjointed whole; his aim is to make the audience consider each image, the opposite of each image, and the uncertainty that follows. The exhibition s title, Proper, is in itself an aberration. While it refers to a seemingly requisite order determined by society at large, it simultaneously suggests the opposite improper and therefore subverts the notion of correctness as it relates to social and societal expectations. In these paintings, things as they should be are indefinite, memories are questionable, and perception is clouded by a juxtaposition of narrative and ambiguity. In a key painting, we are confronted by the cropped, larger-than-life-sized face of Condoleeza Rice. Prompted by a remark made by a Belgian official, in which Rice was described as strong; not unpretty, Tuymans portrait of Rice forces us to reevalua
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tailipoe
Trevor
