Luc Tuymans.

The surfaces of Luc Tuymans's small paintings are monochromatic and frail, as if recuperating from a long illness. In the tradition of Flemish and Spanish still-life genre painting, they represent domestic scenes or commonplace objects such as a pillow or a cake. These still lifes resonate, however, with a sense of the uncanny. Hovering beneath the surface of Tuymans's quiet paintings are deep-seated anxieties that rise to the surface in his depictions of faces or parts of the body. Though modest in scale and sensitive in execution, the work's power lies in conveying a sense of violence, or a haunting evocation of lost lives and repressed histories. Among the most exciting of a recent generation of painters, Belgian artist Tuymans has exhibited widely in Europe and the United States.