Luc Tuymans is one of today's most widely admired painters, a continuation of the great tradition of Northern European painting and an enduring influence on younger and emerging artists. As a European child of the 1950s, his relationship to painting is inevitably structured by television, cinema and by the lingering effects of World War II; more recent historical preoccupations have included the dramatic turn of world events post-9/11. Tuymans combines a muted palette with deteriorated surface effect and a singular use of cropping, close-up and sequencing--perfect devices with which to undertake his investigation of the pathological, the banal and the conspiratorial.