In his mostly small-format pieces, he is concerned neither with a critique of painting nor with a consideration of its history. For that reason one might believe that Tuymans’ works are conventional and express nothing new. But still these paintings have an evocative power; the viewer wants to know more about them, to know what is happening in them, what they mean, what they show, what they hide. They seem at first glance closed, unapproachable, even threatening. The viewer is perplexed, indeed annoyed by the inaccessibility of what is depicted on the canvas, and consequently withdraws into the uncomfortable feeling that only some distance exists—into the sense of an impending disaster that cannot be understood via the usual categories of perception, but that is almost physically present.