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Luc Tuymans — Altar
Luc Tuymans — Altar
Luc Tuymans — Altar
Luc Tuymans — Altar
Luc Tuymans — Altar
Luc Tuymans

Altar

2002

Luc Tuymans 's Altar (Documenta11 Edition) is a 3D-collaged digital print from 2002, based on a surveillance photograph of a wedding chapel inside a Mormon temple, a space normally inaccessible to non-members. The limited edition artwork reflects Tuymans's sustained interest in restricted visibility, institutional power, and the ethics of looking, translating a covert interior into a mediated, distanced experience. Presented in the artist's frame and mounted behind sand-blasted opaque plexiglass, the work deliberately obscures its subject, reinforcing themes of secrecy, surveillance, and passive spectatorship. The entire framed construction forms the artwork, maintaining Tuymans's characteristic balance between visual restraint and psychological unease. "This 3D-collaged digital print depicts a wedding chapel in a Mormon temple, an image only privy to the eyes of church members, and produced by Tuymans after a photograph of the space from a surveillance camera. Challenging the perceptual process with his sublime works, Tuymans responds to the ethically fraught associations with marriage in religious sects by undermining the covert and exclusive treatment of this area and exposes the omnipresence of surveillance all the while maintaining mystery with the dream-like quality of his seemingly somnambulant scenes. Discreet yet unsettling, this print highlights the gaping magnitude of impotence and passive spectatorship only once the cognitive references are clear, paradoxically encouraging a passive escapism on a purely visual level."  – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp

Medium
Prints

Notes

From MLTPL New Art Editions collection. Handle: luc-tuymans-altar.

For Sale — $5500

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About this work

Luc Tuymans, Altar, 2002

Luc Tuymans 's Altar (Documenta11 Edition) is a 3D-collaged digital print from 2002, based on a surveillance photograph of a wedding chapel inside a Mormon temple, a space normally inaccessible to non-members. The limited edition artwork reflects Tuymans's sustained interest in restricted visibility, institutional power, and the ethics of looking, translating a covert interior into a mediated, distanced experience. Presented in the artist's frame and mounted behind sand-blasted opaque plexiglass, the work deliberately obscures its subject, reinforcing themes of secrecy, surveillance, and passive spectatorship. The entire framed construction forms the artwork, maintaining Tuymans's characteristic balance between visual restraint and psychological unease. "This 3D-collaged digital print depicts a wedding chapel in a Mormon temple, an image only privy to the eyes of church members, and produced by Tuymans after a photograph of the space from a surveillance camera. Challenging the perceptual process with his sublime works, Tuymans responds to the ethically fraught associations with marriage in religious sects by undermining the covert and exclusive treatment of this area and exposes the omnipresence of surveillance all the while maintaining mystery with the dream-like quality of his seemingly somnambulant scenes. Discreet yet unsettling, this print highlights the gaping magnitude of impotence and passive spectatorship only once the cognitive references are clear, paradoxically encouraging a passive escapism on a purely visual level."  – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp

Medium
Prints
Year
2002
Seen at
MLTPL, Hamburg

Related themes

Muted Palette, Belgian Artist, Conceptual Art, Printmaking, Religious Symbolism, Contemporary Art, Figurative, Post-Modern

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