Luc Tuymans
I would also like to talk about another artist whose work I really admire, Luc Tuymans, whose work has a realistic absurdity to it. His paintings also depict reality, but his colours, his compositions, are very special. He has a very strong personal style and his work is a bit like photography in terms of perspective and composition. What strikes me most about his work is the softness and subtlety of his palette and the absurdity behind the reality.
The colours in his work are monochromatic (as in Figure 1,2) and not very visually striking, but they tend to make the viewer think. He has his own unique painting language and colour system, and his use of colour has inspired me in some ways, such as how to use colour subjectively, and I am trying to build up a colour system of my own. When it comes to my own colours, I prefer real colours, or to be more precise, colours that are less pure than real colours, so I often use this concept in my paintings, which is my personal aesthetic preference.
Figure 1, The Worshipper ,2004
193,0 x 147,5 cm
oil on canvas
Figure 2, Der Diagnostische Blick VII, 1992
65,5 x 45,5 cm
oil on canvas
His paintings with strong metaphor and absurdity. This is what I am trying to convey in my work, and Figure 3 is an example of the absurd metaphorical nature of reality in my previous works. In the work Ceiling (fig. 4), Luc Tuymans' cut-out images of wooden rafters are depicted as oxymorons, suggesting the abstraction of cold formalist painting and the kind of recognisable, intimate and familiar objects that are at the heart of Luc Tuymans' work: fragments of scenes separated from their contexts, never able to exude their "breath".
Figure 3, Saviour, 2019
Digital Painting
Figure 4, Ceiling ，1993
30x50cm
oil on canvas
Finally, I want to talk about his technique, which is a further extension of photography, television and film and other media, and trimming, framing, sequencing and sometimes even close-up on the material. The subject matter ranges from historical events to eye-catching objects, ranging from the Belgian colonial history of the Congo to depictions of everyday objects. The images in his paintings are ambiguous and do not directly explain the scene and content. Through various metaphors, they give people ambiguous associations of details and fragmented things. Perhaps as he said: "A good painting should have the power to hear thunder in a silent place."
Reference
Tuymans, L. (2004) The Worshipper [Oil on Canvas]. Available at: http://www.artda.cn/yishujiakuguowai-c-1628.html (Accessed: 7 April 2009).
Tuymans, L. (1992) Der Diagnostische Blick VII [Oil on Canvas]. Available at: http://www.artda.cn/yishujiakuguowai-c-1628.html (Accessed: 7 April 2009).
Tuymans, L. (1993) Ceiling [Oil on Canvas]. Available at: http://www.artda.cn/yishujiakuguowai-c-1628.html (Accessed: 7 April 2009).