Luc Tuymans Graphic Works at PNCA’s Feldman Gallery

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 3, 2014
Contact: Lisa Radon, Communications Specialist
lradon@pnca.edu 971-255-5528
Becca Biggs, Director of Communications
bbiggs@pnca.edu 971-255-5511

Luc Tuymans Graphic Works at PNCA’s Feldman Gallery Solo exhibition of prints by influential Belgian artist

Exhibition | Luc Tuymans: Graphic Works – Kristalnacht to Technicolor
Philip Feldman Gallery - PNCA 1241 NW Johnson, Portland
Thursday, March 6, 2014 – Friday, June 13, 2014

Public Reception
Philip Feldman Gallery - PNCA 1241 NW Johnson, Portland Thursday March 6, 2014, 6-8pm

Artist Talk | Luc Tuymans Swigert Commons, PNCA Main Campus March 7, 2014, 6:30pm

Portland, OR, February 3, 2014 — The Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space at Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) is pleased to present an exhibition of prints by the influential artist, Luc Tuymans. Luc Tuymans: Graphic Works – Kristalnacht to Technicolor opens with a public reception on March 6, 2014 from 6-8 pm and runs through June 13, 2014. Though he is known primarily as a painter, Belgian artist Luc Tuymans (b. 1958) has, and continues to produce extraordinary work in the discipline of printmaking. Graphic Works – Kristalnacht to Technicolor brings together an array of Tuymans’ printmaking works. The pieces were produced between 1992 and 2013 and range in technique from color photocopy—Kristalnacht, 1992—to a twelve stone color lithograph—Gene (Plant), 2004.

The exhibition will also feature examples of Tuymans’ experiments in printing on non-traditional surfaces such as Transitions A-B-C-D, 2008, which was produced with multi-colored screenprints on PVC plastic. Tuymans’ paintings and printworks are the results of a wide-ranging research process through a variety of source materials. Television snapshots, newspaper clippings, and most importantly his own Polaroid photography, are all amassed into his image database palette.

Tuymans’s prints exist side by side with his paintings. And like his Polaroids, Tuymans’ paintings are also added to his image database palette. In some instances he will produce lithographic drawings based on paintings he created from these source materials. The seven-print portfolio, The Spiritual Exercises, 2007 was based on watercolors Tuymans created from his research into the lasting legacy of the Jesuit tradition in his home of Antwerp, which served as the cultural center of the late sixteenth century Counter-Reformation movement. The paintings and resulting prints were inspired by an illustrated edition from 1673 of the Jesuit publication, Exercitia Spiritualia. With Shore, a five color screenprint from 2005, Tuymans returned to a 2003 Polaroid he shot of a beach with a ripple of water rolling in, from which he painted the oil on canvas Oostende, 2003. For the print translation of the photo, Tuymans chose to emulate the golden hues he originally captured, rather than the grey tones he used in the 2003 painting. The orientation of the print shifted from the rectangle of the Polaroid and 2003 painting to a square.

Six years later Tuymans will again return to these works for a vertically-formatted, oil on canvas painting, Shore, 2011, where he merges the grey tones of Oostende with the yellow highlights of the screenprint. It is Luc Tuymans’ dedication to form and his willingness to revisit subject matter that result in his refined images. Sparsely colored and hauntingly foggy renderings of forgotten children, light-swept rooms, and our televised past and present echo his research into Europe’s wars, Belgian colonialism, and utopian impulses. Luc Tuymans: Graphic Works – Kristalnacht to Technicolor is curated by Feldman Gallery + Project Space Director, Mack McFarland and PNCA faculty member, Modou Dieng, in direct collaboration with the artist.

About Luc Tuymans
Belgian artist Luc Tuymans is widely credited with 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: Born in 1958 in Morstel, near Antwerp, Belgium, Tuymans was one of the first artists to be represented by David Zwirner. He joined the gallery in 1994 and had his first American solo exhibition that same year. In 2013, Luc Tuymans: The Summer is Over was on view in New York and marked his tenth solo show with the gallery. In 2013, a solo presentation of the artist’s portraits, Nice. Luc Tuymans, was hosted by The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. His work was recently the subject of a retrospective co-organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It traveled from 2010 to 2011 to the Dallas Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.

Previous major solo exhibitions include those organized by the Moderna Museet Malmö, Sweden in 2009 and Tate Modern, London in 2004. Other venues that have presented recent solo shows include the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain (2011); Haus der Kunst, Munich; Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (both 2008); Műcsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest (2007); and the Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2006). A catalogue raisonné of the artist’s paintings is currently being prepared by David Zwirner in collaboration with Studio Luc Tuymans. Compiled and edited by art historian Eva Meyer-Hermann, the catalogue raisonné will illustrate and document approximately 500 paintings by the artist from 1975 to the present day. In 2001, the artist represented Belgium at the 49th Venice Biennale.

His works are featured in museum collections worldwide, including The Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Tate Gallery, London. Tuymans recently donated his portrait of Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. He lives and works in Antwerp.

About the Feldman Gallery + Project Space
The Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space at Pacific Northwest College of Art is dedicated to the work of national and international contemporary artists. Directed by Mack McFarland, the gallery mounts five exhibitions a year that highlight 21st century art and design practices, and support the College’s curriculum. Future projects include an exhibition of prints from Luc Tuymans in March 2014, co-curated by McFarland and PNCA Painting faculty Modou Dieng. In Fall of 2014, the gallery will host new works from Abigail Anne Newbold, curated by Museum of Contemporary Craft’s Sarah Margolis-Pineo and a new project by Eva and Franco Mattes, curated by Mack McFarland.

About Pacific Northwest College of Art
As Oregon’s flagship college of art and design since 1909, Pacific Northwest College of Art has helped shape Oregon’s visual arts landscape for more than a century. PNCA students study with award-winning faculty in small classes. In the last seven years, PNCA has doubled both the student body and full-time faculty, quadrupled its endowment, and added innovative undergraduate and graduate programs. PNCA is now embarking on its boldest venture yet by establishing the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design as an anchor for the College’s vision of a new campus home on Portland’s North Park Blocks. Focusing on the transformative power of creativity, the capital campaign, Creativity Works Here, was launched in June 2012 with a lead gift from The Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation of $5 million. PNCA’s new home will be a bustling hub for creativity and entrepreneurship, reflecting the influential role of art and design in our 21st century economy – both in Portland and beyond.

For more information: pnca.edu.