Luc Tuymans: Corporate

Luc Tuymans' latest body of work, currently on show at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York (until 21 December 2010), focuses on the phenomenon of corporations; their self-serving nature and the influence their activities hold over an unsuspecting populace. The images consider how their abstract, formal structures impact decision-making and ultimately shape everyday lives. 

The series builds upon Tuymans' previous work, typically painted from pre-existing imagery and depicted as though set behind a thin translucent film. Appearing, at first glance banal and innocuous, the deeper meaning suggested by these subjects - and their chilling commentary on modern life - are subtly revealed as the viewer contemplates the work. Tuymans has been said to have reinvented history painting for the present, by depicting contemporary scenarios through this traditional painting genre as a comment on modern issues. 

In Corporate, the various subjects each reveal a different aspect of the message the artist is seeking to convey. Butterfly, for example, draws a parallel between the evolutionary properties of the moth and the development of the corporation. In both instances camouflage is important, making it difficult to differentiate real from fake.

'The show came to me through the idea of light; light that you have at events, or in corporate buildings - in the entrance hall,' says Tuymans of the series. 'In Panel for example [taken from a digital photograph of a real discussion event between the Director of Bozar, art scholar Hans de Wolf, documentary film-maker Manu Riche and the artist himself], the people are overlit, you don't see any features of the faces. That's what this corporate element is: the element of the anonymous; the anonymous person and the anonymous group.' 

As well as his solo show in New York, this year Tuymans has also been the subject of his first major retrospective in the US (currently on show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago until 9 January 2011) and was the co-curator of A Vision of Central Europe at Brugge Centraal (until 23 January 2011).

The opening of Corporate coincides with the launch of Phaidon's new monograph on the artist, Luc Tuymans: Is It Safe?, which covers Tuymans' work since 2005. Produced in close collaboration with the artist, the work includes more than 100 new paintings, many previously unpublished.