Luc Tuymans

Spanning some thirty years, Luc Tuymans exhibition, Intolerance, speaks to certain abiding preoccupations the Belgian painter has long mined in counterpoint with a rapidly changing world. Well aware from the outset of his career that painting as an art-form was widely considered in crisis and that the role and ubiquity of the image in contemporary culture was radically shifting as a consequence of proliferating technological developments, Tuymans adopted a contestatory position. In a contrarian move, painting became for him a vehicle through which the most urgent and volatile issues, whether relating to history, identity, nationalism and belief, or to head-line social and political events could be eloquently probed. Organized around key thematics in Tuymans stringent practice, this ambitious retrospective will cast new light on his singular trajectory.