20.08.–22.08.1994

The exhibition with 8 pictures is in Frankfurt at short notice for 4 days. The pictures, created this year, will soon be shown in New York and another such opportunity to exhibit them in Europe will not arise. The pictures' premiere is therefore in Frankfurt.

The second reason for the spontaneous fit-in of this exhibition is Luc Tuymans' wish to experience exactly these pictures in exactly this concentrated spatial container of Portikus.

The exhibition at Portikus is the result of the insight that it has to be done in this manner and now.

Based on his own experience, Luc Tuysmans knows of the possibly only few visitors of exhibitions that are so short and short-term, decided upon only on account of an inner logic, so to speak - and then it's midsummer holiday season. What is important for him is the possible intensity of such an insecure project - "...to deal with an institution in a non-institutional way..."

The artist Luc Tuymans is familiar with the purist spatial atmosphere of Portikus. He experienced the joint set-up period for the thematic group exhibition "Menschenwelt" as quite intensive. The exhibition was arranged by Dr. Martin Hentschel with the participating artists at about the same time last year in Portikus. Dr. Hentschel was curator at the time and is now director of the Württembergische Kunstverein.

Luc Tuymans, born 1958 in Antwerp, studied at the academy there and is still working in Antwerp today. His first solo exhibition was in 1984 at the swimming-baths Thermae Palace in Ostend. It lasted just one day and was only seen by his parents and a few acquaintances. What was important for him then, as it is now at Portikus, was the distance the chosen site allowed for viewing his own works. Apart from his subsequent solo exhibitions, for example at the Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld showing 50 pictures in an overall view of his work, Luc Tuymans became known to a larger audience at the documenta IX.

Luc Tuymans' pictures are subtle in regard to colour and format. The impression the paintings give, as does their size, is deceptive.

One recognises in the paintings, which seem to have been created in passing, spatial architectures abstracted to brush-strokes, fragments of figures, architectural details of the domestic realm. The wan colours and the indeed varying style of painting evoke memories such as that strangely relevant detail in a dream or the inaccessible importance of a deeply-rooted childhood image. It is as deceptive as this type of painting itself, to try and picture these details and images - uncertainties of everyday life. We are not dealing with painting for the sake of painting, but with the depiction of loss or the questioning of the possibility of even being able to picture things, situations, and topics. Only painting, as a means, can reveal the impossibilities of topic and ambition. Painting has a lot to do with restrained sorrow. "...To relate all this, as well as the meaning of the works - the title "Superstition" gives a premonition - to the facade-like peculiarity of Portikus, persuaded me to carry out this exhibition..."

Photos: Katrin Schilling