For decades, Luc Tuymans's paintings have plumbed the nature of images–charting the limits of their personal and political functions. Before the opening of his latest solo show at David Zwirner Gallery, Tuymans spoke with Jarrett Earnest about temperature in paintings, their instantaneous decay, and the balance between violence and tenderness.

Jarrett Earnest (Rail): I wanted to start by talking about color. In this exhibition the painting Model (2015), appears to be a single dark tone, but within it there is a subtle fluctuation between warm and cool, which creates a very gentle rocking across the surface of the painting.

Luc Tuymans: That is true. First of all, I don't use black. That is important to know. I used to use a lot of van Dyck brown to get this really deep, dark color. I do that because it's about the profoundness, the depth of the tone, which, if you use black and just mix it with white, will be flat. Therefore you're right; in Model there are two different colors, it has been worked twice: first in the cool color, then overworked again the same day with a brown because it was too blue. When there was just one color it stuck out too much; it was not the right balance with the image.

Rail: That painting showed me something about the rest of the show, which is that they have a color dynamic that wavers between warm and cool contrasts, that are very close in tone. In the three "Murky Water" paintings (2015) I was particularly interested that they are green, which is already a mixture of warm and cool–blue and yellow. Its relationship to warm and cool is precarious, so that the rather cool green feels warm next to a blue-edged shadow. How do you approach the color temperature as structure?

Tuymans: The temperature of things is really important. The early works, particularly the Gaskamer [Gas Chamber] (1986), are quite warm in temperature. Throughout the years I've become much more cool. There is a big difference between the "Corso" flower parade paintings and the green "Murky Water" paintings–they are from different distances. They are differently painted also. That was the whole idea, to let them collide with each other, which gave me the idea of the title for the show–Le Mépris [Contempt (1963)], the same as Godard's film. The title painting in the exhibition, which shows the fireplace of that fantastic villa where Godard filmed is the only painting in the show that deals not with temperature but with light: light that beams out–pierces, actually–and makes a hole in the wall. In producing a show there is one particular painting I make to stop it, put the lid on the body of work, and that was it.

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The Brooklyn Rail, artist interview by Jarrett Earnest