Les Yeux Sans Visage

Les yeux sans visage, Luc Tuymans, 1990, colagem sobre papel

'Suspended' is an exhibition of pictures showing everyday scenes with people in a friendly stetting, by the swimming pool, in front of a house, near a bus, and so on, in an atmosphere of middle class affluence and a carefree, suburban existence. The figuration is no longer set on largely undifferentiated ground; the composition is more varied; the paintings have more colour than ever before. Yet the people are as if petrified, they display gestures of passivity and unconnectedness. The colours can be unnaturally, inappropriately bright. Even where a path or a flight of stairs leads into the depth of the image, they do not open up a space, so that figures look as though they have been pushed out of the picture, placeless, while in other paintings they seem to be standing against stage-sets. In some there are harsh contrasts in the painterly execution of figure and ground or surrounding, and inordinate differences in size; the paintings are defined by great differences in distance from the viewer (either too close or too far away) along with extreme croppings and apparently random, disturbing combinations of objects. The representation of suburban idylls are immersed in signs of unnaturalness, of dislocation, of impotence, forlornness.

Luc Tuymans, Ulrich Loock, Phaidon, 1996

Les yeux sans visage, Georges Franju, 1960, still de filme

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