NYAB Event - Luc Tuymans "Corporate"

Luc Tuymans "Corporate"

David Zwirner 19th Street

This event has ended.

David Zwirner presents an exhibition of new paintings by Luc Tuymans, on view at the gallery’s 525 West 19th Street space.
Belgian artist Luc Tuymans is widely seen as having contributed to the revival of painting in the 1990s. His sparsely-colored, figurative works speak in a quiet, restrained, and at times unsettling voice, and are typically painted from pre- existing imagery which includes photographs and video stills. His canvases, in turn, become third-degree abstractions from reality and often appear slightly out-of-focus, as if covered by a thin veil or painted from a failing memory. There is almost always a darker undercurrent to what at first appear to be innocuous subjects: working within series, Tuymans has, in this way, explored diverse and sensitive topics including the Holocaust, the effects of images from 9/11, the ambiguous utopia of the Disney Corporation, and the colonial history of his native Belgium, among others.
The works in the present exhibition, Corporate, examine the phenomenon of the corporation. Influenced, in part, by the work of American media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, which looks at the roots of modern-day corporate culture, the exhibition continues Tuymans’s interest in power structures and collective history.1 Rushkoff observes how the purpose of corporatism from the onset was to suppress lateral interactions between people or small companies, instead redirecting any created revenue to a select group of investors. Yet most people,
even corporate leaders, have little awareness of these underlying motivations or how automatically they are compelled by them. They identify with corporations and ultimately surrender their free agency in the process.
Taking their points of departure in the types of lighting found in corporate settings, Tuymans’s works consider how abstract, formal structures impact decision-making and ultimately shape everyday lives. A seminal painting from the series, Corporate recalls the fleet of England’s East India Company, one of the world’s first corporate entities from the early 17th century. Against a bleak sky, and kept in subtle shades of gray and purple, Tuymans portrays a large galleon floating on still water. Its many sails are swaying in the wind, but the overall impression is one of disconcerting quiet and calm. Historically overflowing with rarities from the Far East, it drifts here like a ghost ship on a silent, invasive mission.

Thursday, November 4, 6:30 PM Artist talk,
followed by a reception & book signing New York Studio School,
8 West 8th Street, NYC
Free & open to the public. Seating is limited.

Friday, November 5, 6:30 – 8:30 PM Reception and book signing for the new publication Luc Tuymans: Is It Safe?
(to be published mid-November 2010 by Phaidon Press)
Phaidon Store, 83 Wooster Street, NYC
Free & open to the public.
RSVP: store.soho@phaidon.com 212 925 1900 or phaidon.com/store-soho