ANTWERP, BELGIUM.- This year the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp [MuHKA], which first opened its doors to the public in 1987, has been in existence for 20 years. This is being celebrated with a series of exhibitions under the general title JUBILEE, each of which turns the spotlight on a different aspect of the collection.

#2 - Luc Tuymans I don’t get it, on view through September 9, 2007. The MuHKA exhibition Luc Tuymans I don’t get it on the 4th floor of the Photo-Museum, shedding light on several lesser-known aspects of his work. Luc Tuymans is one of the most respected artists in the contemporary art world. His work prompted a new appreciation of figurative painting at a time when it was considered barely relevant. His paintings are exhibited in renowned museums in Belgium and abroad. However, the accent in Luc Tuymans I don’t get it is not on the paintings but on what takes place on the fringes of his work as a painter. It covers the broad range of his oeuvre: documentary material, an overview of his multiples, the film Feu d’Artifice, a selection of Polaroids, miscellaneous publications, and so on. It is the first time such a large collection of his ephemeral work has been assembled in an exhibition.

Regarding his paintings, Tuymans refers to ‘authentic forgeries’. What he means is that they do not simply fall into his lap, but owe a lot to existing images. Original creation is not possible, since everything has already been done by others. Tuymans uses drawings, photos, film stills, Polaroids, texts and other documentation as the basis of his work and reinterprets the images that emerge from them. Sometimes they are banal, and sometimes they have a social or historical relevance. It is this background to his paintings that is the focus of Luc Tuymans I don’t get it. The images that didn’t make it to the canvas, but just missed it. You might call it ‘the collateral damage from doing a painting’.

The exhibition includes a documentary collection of photos, texts and books that refer to the essence of his work, and also the photographic evidence of murals Tuymans did in the Ruimte Morgen, Alberto’s café in Antwerp, Watou, Witte de With and Vladivostok. Much of Tuymans’ ephemeral work was created to help various institutions. The exhibition also takes a look at this. Several marvellous printed works are shown, including The Rumour, a series of seven lithographs he presented to the MuHKA as a gift, and Le Verdict, a series of eleven lithographs on wallpaper.

Another gem from the MuHKA collection that is rarely shown is the film Feu d’Artifice, a recording of a 1982 performance with ‘tableaux vivants’ set in the arcades in Ostend, where the artist declaims writings by Fernando Pessoa, Joseph Conrad, Michel de Ghelderode and himself. Polaroids play an important part in the genesis of many of Tuymans’ paintings. Not only does he often work on the basis of these specific photos, but his paintings also develop in a similar way, from vague outlines to pictorial details. In addition to a selection of thirty Polaroids, the artist has made a short film specially for this exhibition, using a high-speed camera that visualises the development process of the Polaroid and so makes a direct link with his working method.

Lastly, to symbolise the transient nature of the work shown, the exhibition is provided with a smoking room. After all, a cigarette is just as temporary as murals and the appearance of an image in a Polaroid. At the same time, Tuymans makes it clear that smoking is part of his work, a part of him, a minor statement at a time when the cigarette is actually being banished from public life.

Luc Tuymans I don’t get it is intended to show a dynamic link between various aspects of Tuymans’ oeuvre: multiples, documents, murals, Polaroids, etc. The emphasis is on the development of images in the work of an artist who operates on the boundaries of absence and presence [recognition, collective consciousness, etc.]. Images which, in their vagueness, only slowly reveal themselves and are often open to several interpretations, something which is also reflected in the choice of the title for the exhibition.

Luc Tuymans I don’t get it is the first exhibition the MuHKA has organised on the fourth floor of the FotoMuseum, where the two institutions are putting together a shared exhibition programme whose common theme is visual culture.

Luc Tuymans has a great affinity with film. At the start of his career he experimented with the medium and today he still often takes inspiration from film techniques. We took this opportunity to ask him to compile a personal film programme for MuHKA_media.