"Art creates its own time span and in that sense also creates its own time lapse: you are looking at something that accords time to an image, as it is made and as it shows itself."
Luc Tuymans, 2005

Through his pale and transcendent paintings, Luc Tuymans explores history and memory through strategic methods of visual composition. By cropping, framing, and isolating his scenes, Tuymans is actively re-invigorating the traditional act of painting. The present lot, Exhibit #2, 2002, belongs to Tuyman’s Exhibit series originally comprised of five works. The pictorial imagery found in this serial group is based upon an exhibit seen by Tuymans at the Museum of Natural History in Tokyo; the dioramas seen there depict primates in various stages of sexual reproduction. These scenes were documented by Tuymans with Polaroids and then reproduced in paint. Exhibit #2, 2002 has been rendered in matte, pale tones, mimicking the deadening light that shone upon the taxidermy ape within the museum setting. The muted greys, lavenders, greens and coral gives the illusion of an under exposed photograph or one visually faded by age and the bleaching effects of light. This frozen moment of a primate, taxidermied and stuffed, photographed and painted, has been depicted in a sexual exploit, one naturally inherit to the development and natural pattern of life and instinct.

Tuymans explains that “when I thought about trying to paint the sexual act for example, I came to the conclusion that it was impossible to depict, because it is timeless. It is a timeless repetition.” (Luc Tuymans in J. Vicente Aliaga, “Interview,” Luc Tuymans, London, 2007, p. 22) This “timeless repetition” implicates the entire concept of representation and its perceived falsities on many levels: from nature to museum display to photograph to painting. By exploring this chain of transmission, Tuymans removes the natural specimen as far as possible from its “original” state in nature and creatively re-appropriates it for this provocative and powerful work.