Recherches (Investigations) 1998

The painting recherches was just so subtle but really sublime and really beautiful. With Tuymans' usual subdued color palette, using only cools such as blues and greens, Tuymans has painted what appears to be an interior scene. Shown so simply, the bright color and the one tone darks implies a bright eery light illuminating from behind the scene like the intense light of an atom bomb.

The scene, made up of only a few black marks, implies the wall meeting the floor at a diagonal and a window. Inside the window, there appears to be a plant of some kind, maybe a desk or a book, perhaps something hanging on the wall. All detail is bleached out by what gives the illusion of an intense light, when in actuality its a very dull bluish-green.

I was really impressed by all of Tuymans work. I've only ever seen one or at the most two Tuymans paintings at a time and to see so many together made an incredible effect. They exhibited together so powerfully, all creating such a sublime feeling to the large MCA rooms they were shown in.