Thickskinned (Luc Tuymans – Pinault Collection)

As part of the cycle of monographic shows dedicated to major contemporary artists, Palazzo Grassi presents Luc Tuymans’ (Mortsel, Belgio – 1958) first personal exhibition in Italy curated by Caroline Bourgeois. Considered as one of the most influential painters of the international art scene, Tuymans has accepted the challenge of painting by interrogating his capacity to represent the multiform character of contemporary experience. His painting digs into the depths our history and our society, playing on elusive allusions, clues and recurring topos, all of which only brings the surface to light: Skin (La Pelle). The Belgian artist represents a world of shadows, the Banality of Evil of Hannah Arendt, suspended between sense and significance, apparently calm in an amplified and pervasive silence. His works force us to look beyond the flat painted surface, which is cold and expressionless, to reach the hidden folds underneath. They are translucent images, seemingly distant but at the same time familiar and disturbing, based on the register of “eerie strangeness”.