Wako Works of Art is pleased to present Early works, a two-person exhibition featuring Raoul De Keyser and Luc Tuymans. is exhibition brings together paintings and works on paper by both artists from the 1980s to the 1990s.

Looking at an artist’s early works makes it easier to discern the principles that guided their practice. In later works, both the manner of painting and the approach to omission emerge as a cohesive whole, reflecting the artist’s unique method. Earlier works, however, still retain traces of the preceding stages. Through close examination, the individual artists’ choices made in the course of making each work tend to come to the fore: whether to begin with color or form, how to treat the negative space, what to retain, and where to stop. In De Keyser’s paintings, there is, first and foremost, a refined distance and relationship among color, line, and negative space, and the subject emerges within this framework. On the other hand, Tuymans begins with an image that has already passed through photography, film, or printed matter. His paintings retain both that mediated image and the distance created by its prior passage through other forms of representation.

To revisit an artist’s early works after becoming familiar with the mature works produced once their style had been fully established is a rare privilege reserved solely for us, the viewers today. What aspects of each style—meticulously shaped through the accumulation of time and practice—are already present, and which are still in flux? Where did each painting begin, and how did it gradually take form? We invite you to enjoy this opportunity to look back across that long span of time and to observe it closely.