That will include the three mentioned plus the previous two: Les Gilles de Binche (2005) and Tuymans' the first Jesuit exhibition (only shown in Japan) Restoration (2006). "The link between all of them is utopia,” explains Tuymans. “You could already find that, in a mild version, in the folklore of the Gilles. It obviously was present in Walt Disney's work, and the Jesuits have a utopian mindset, too – although it’s a hidden agenda."

Does he always start with a theoretical concept? “Not at all. After the Jesuits and Walt Disney, which were already partially about virtue, I had been looking for a more disparate idea. I didn’t want the new series to follow seamlessly on the previous ones.”

So he turned to – however difficult to image – reality television. Virtual images, for lack of a more unifying concept, form the basis of Against the Day. Two of the paintings, “Big Brother” and “CCTV” are both based on images from the UK’s Big Brother. A few paintings are anchored in reality: “iPhone”, for instance, a portrait of Tuymans' own shadow. Others clearly have a virtual basis. " ‘Office’ is based on an image from a database of office furnishings, but those spaces have never been completely decorated. It’s the idea of a blind skin.”

There's another important influence: The spading figure in “Against the Day I” and “II” was inspired by the movie There Will Be Blood. “Especially by those amazing first 15 wordless minutes, in which the main character is ploughing the ground with a pick axe,” smiles Tuymans.

As for the title of the exhibition, “I borrowed it from Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel,” says Tuymans. “Pynchon is the man who introduced paranoia in American literature. His The Crying of Lot 49 about mail distribution companies talked about a proto-internet. And the idea of tearing down utopia is present in all of his work.”

I have the impression that Tuymans paints series in function of planned exhibitions. "When I work on a painting, I do think about the group of paintings that will be shown,” he says. “But I find it important that each painting can be seen out of context, since most of them end up in museums where they will be shown in radically different constellations, which gives them new meanings."

Tuymans puts a great deal of work into each painting before he even starts: looking for the right images and making models or drawings can take several months. Finally, "the moment I start painting, I know what they all will look like.” He never uses an easel, favouring a canvas attached to the wall, which is why almost all of his paintings have different dimensions.

“I finish a painting in one day. And it's impossible for me to create it again. Technically I could do it without any problem, but it would feel fake."

www.luctuymans.be

“A piece of art is exactly what it isn't”