The Gap: Selected Abstract Art from Belgium
Texts by Joris Dhooghe, Cathryn Drake, Jesus Fuenmayor, Bruno Leitao, Ulrich Loock, Kate Mayne, Ken Pratt, and Gregory Volk. Interview with the artist by Ziba Ardalan
To accompany the exhibition, The Gap: Selected Abstract Art from Belgium, curated by Luc Tuymans, Parasol unit has produced this full color, comprehensive publication. Printed in a hand-numbered limited edition of 1,200 copies, it includes discerning essays on each of the 15 exhibiting artists by Joris Dhooghe, Cathryn Drake, Jesus Fuenmayor, Bruno Leitao, Ulrich Loock, Kate Mayne, Ken Pratt, and Gregory Volk. The publication includes an insightful discussion between Luc Tuymans and Ziba Ardalan, full color plates of all the works in the exhibition, and installation views at Parasol unit galleries.
Publisher: Parasol unit
Artists: Luc Tuymans, Raoul De Keyser, Francis Alÿs
Contributors: Ziba Ardalan, Joris Dhooghe, Cathryn Drake, Jesus Fuenmayor, Bruno Leitao, Ulrich Loock, Kate Mayne, Ken Pratt, Luc Tuymans, and Gregory Volk
Publication Date: 2015
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 9 3/4 x 11 1/4 in (24.8 x 28.6 cm)
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9780957351882
Retail: $55 | £35
Status: Available
Luc Tuymans
Luc Tuymans (b. 1958, Mortsel) is a Belgian artist who is internationally known for his paintings that engage equally with questions of history and its representation as with quotidian subject matter cast in unfamiliar and eerie light. Painted from preexisting imagery, his works often appear slightly out-of-focus and sparsely colored, like third-degree abstractions from reality. Whereas earlier works were based on magazine pictures, drawings, television footage, and Polaroids, recent source images include material accessed online and the artist’s own iPhone photos, printed out and sometimes re-photographed several times. Since the 1980s, Tuymans has steadily exhibited in the United States, Europe, and abroad, and his work is represented in major museum collections.
Raoul De Keyser
For nearly fifty years, Raoul De Keyser (1930-2012) created subtly evocative paintings and works on paper which appear at once straightforward and cryptic, abstract and figurative. Composed of basic but indefinable shapes and marks, his works often invoke spatial and figural illusions, though they remain elusive of any descriptive narrative. Despite—or precisely because of—their sparse gesturing, De Keyser’s works convey a grandeur that inspires prolonged contemplation. Individually as well as collectively, his works revolve around the activity of painting, but also move beyond its physical means to become more than the sum of their parts. Their apparent simplicity belies a lengthy gestation period, which is guided largely by intuition, rather than by following a pre-existing plan.
Francis Alÿs
Francis Alÿs’s art is centered around observations of, and engagements with, everyday life. His multifaceted projects include public actions, installations, videos, paintings, and drawings; the artist himself has described his work as “a sort of discursive argument composed of episodes, metaphors, or parables.” Across these different media, Alÿs presents his distinct poetic and imaginative sensibility towards anthropological and political concerns. His actions have involved traveling the longest possible route between locations in Mexico and the United States to highlight the increasing obstacles imposed along the border; pushing a melting block of ice through city streets; commissioning sign painters to copy his paintings; filming his efforts to enter the center of a tornado; carrying a leaking can of paint along the contested Israel/Palestine border; and equipping hundreds of volunteers to move a colossal sand dune ten centimeters.