SAATCHI GALLERY
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SELECTED WORKS BY Tal R



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Tal R

New Quarter

2003
Mixed Media on Canvas

250 x 250cm

In New Quarter, all the characters of the barrio turn out: the pimpish don, moustachioed wideboy and the scar-faced bandito/padre. The ravished tower-block ghetto is a kiddie version of Atari graphics. It's a painting of communal harmony; a portrait of a seedy underworld eroding in Benetton colours.


Tal R

Last Drawing Before Mars

2004
Mixed Media

280 x 280cm

Last Drawing Before Mars is a collage of supernova proportions. Bursting with the graphics of primitive special effects, Tal R makes a painting-cum-time machine. Hundreds of tiny clipped figures and consumer ephemera are conjoined in the unifying rays: a Nazi soldier to a gay porn star, a cartoon cat to a chintz lamp. People with no heads or wrong heads and others with skulls merge seamlessly with ugly furniture, sock puppets, tribal sculptures and status-symbol splendour.


Tal R

Sisters of Kolbojnik

2002
Oil on Canvas

250 x 250cm

‘I do painting a bit like people make a lunch box,' Tal R explains, ‘I constantly have this hot-pot boiling and I throw all kinds of material into it.' 'Kolbojnik', the Hebrew word for leftovers, is more than appropriate to describe his home-baked painting style: imaginary pastoral scenes based on his everyday life, rendered in guttural faux abstraction, canvases often literally collaged together like a visual goulash. Sisters of Kolbojnik, depicting an earthy gang of shaggy-haired, bell-bottomed nymphs in a magic-mushroom forest, is a celebration of overlooked wall-flower beauty, as socially inclusive as a community mural.


Tal R

Melody

2003
Mixed Media on Canvas

280 x 280cm

Tal R's Melody is like a giant Picasso drug trip. Thematically borrowing from avant-garde assemblage drawings, Tal R swaps violins, Paris café tables and newspaper clippings for rock'n'roll guitars, anthem-coloured paint and hefty sheets of canvas. Arranged in a spiralling vortex, his collage has a folksy, hippy-trippy feel about it; a crafty flashback to the sixties. Tal R paints a communal kind of abstraction, as infinitely groovy and commercial as a Beatles box set.


Tal R

Cousins

2002
Mixed Media on Canvas

200 x 200cm

Cousins brandishes the sculptural inherence of two dimensional painting: the colossal weight of the colour black, how little gobs of green and pink become solid objects in their own right, and lines not drawn, but made from cut and layered canvas, seem a natural extension of surface. Tal R propagates a softer, cuddlier avant-garde, where all things having achieved logo-istic equality, he resurrects the almost forgotten concept of artistic genius.


Tal R

Fungusia

2002
Oil Paint, Crayon, Paper, Pasteboard on Canvas

250 x 250cm

Tal R's continuous use of a solid band across the bottom of his paintings gives citation to the framing of TV screens; the space above becomes an interchangeable place for action, where images can be substituted like channel surfing. In Fungusia, Tal R imports a trippy spiral of magic mushrooms. Hypnotically mesmerising, his suggestive forms and putrid colours play dizzying tricks of perspective, oozing sickly in their phallic reference.


Tal R

Birth of Figure

2003
Pen and Chalk on Paper

36.5 x 72cm

In
Birth of Figure, Tal R humorously depicts his process of artistic
creation. Drawing tongue-in-cheek reference to Courbet's L'Origine
du Monde, Tal R's earth mother is the opposite of sexual:
simply a giant pair of cartoon-ish legs, she perversely spurts
out one masterpiece after the next. Surrounded by the grotesque
totems of her making, they dumbly stare in bleak confrontation.
The chequered pattern of the bed suggests the conceptual stratagem
of chess.


Tal R

Birth of Laughing Chinaman

2002
Paper Collage, Pen on Paper

29.5 x 69cm

Tal R's Birth of Laughing Chinaman is a pastiche of visual imagery; the construction of this piece is as incongruous as an out of time lip-sync. Tal R's cartoon-ish drawing obeys no discernable logic. The room, in disjointed perspective, becomes a depository for random items of Tal R's invention: 60's furniture, a ship in a bottle, shrunken heads and voodoo sculptures. Revelling in absurdity, Tal R creates this image simply to will its existence. Collaged elements, such as the film projector and spider web, serve to further distort the sense of space, their applied shapes contribute to the jumbled disorder.


Tal R

Cream 13

2003
Paper Collage, Pen and Chalk on Paper

31.5 x 94.5cm

Tal R merges the stylised primitivism of the avant-garde with his own contemporary lexicon of suburban culture. Inspired by the psychedelia of 60's album covers, Tal R's Cream 13 portrays all the accoutrements of rock and roll sin with a ham-fisted approximation of Picasso. Use of low art materials, such as biro pen and cut and paste, lends a degenerate feel to this high art reference, trapping the drawing between teenage doodle and masterpiece.


Tal R

Inside Out

2001
Pen on Paper

21 x 29.5cm

Depicting an artist's studio, Tal R's Inside Out seizes on the clichéd perceptions of creative value. Clad in tie-dyed muumuu, surrounded by rows of dried flowers, and ugly muddy pots, Tal R portrays his sculptress as a new age bohemian. These ethics of communal harmony and individual expression are prized above all else in Tal R's work. His art is made of everyday experience and materials, his contribution construed as generosity of vision.


Tal R

Psykologi Canit Dance

2002

29.5 x 96cm

In this tribute to very large hairstyles, Tal R elaborates on the obsessive patterning which is predominant throughout his work. Psykologi Canit Dance shows Tal R at his most refined. Drawn entirely in ballpoint pen, his women are like flowers in window displays, gaining an unlikely fragile elegance, beautifully embossed into the smooth surface of the paper.


Tal R

Pyramid Player

2003
Pen on Paper

38 x 29.5cm

Tal R skilfully transplants the innocence of childhood into the knowingness of the adult world; his work often culminates in a pubescent inanity, all too aware of its contradictions. In Pyramid Player, Tal R depicts a glam rock fantasy. Drawn in the style of story-book illustration, Tal R embraces the puerile occultism of teen pastime: an Elton John-like idol cum pagan deity, the fertile symbolic animals a juvenile excuse to draw penises. In his faux-ingenuousness, Tal R insinuates a complicated nostalgia, a longing for a time when malevolence was just play.


Tal R

Shamotte

2001
Pen on Paper

21 x 29.5cm

Tal R's drawings of teenage bedrooms are infused with awkward embarrassment; the secure dens of iniquity, of immature fantasy, and unfulfilled lust. Crammed with overwhelming information, Tal R delights in drawing the ephemera of adolescent identity crisis: Japanese lanterns, slickly ferns, tattered bongos and head-shop posters, the trade fare of rebellious fashion. Tal R captures this child/adult inbetweeness at its most vulnerable moment: pants down, Shamotte is both funny and cringe-worthy.


Tal R

Spiral Bar

2002
Pen on Paper

23.5 x 32cm

Tal R uses vortex compositions repetitively in his work, as seen in paintings such as Melody and Fungusia. In his drawing Spiral Bar, Tal R pushes this design to the extreme. Like an alcoholic's fantasy of the ultimate cocktail lounge Spiral Bar spins out of control in dizzying delight. Tal R's drawing is a time consuming process: the web of lines has been ruled, and shading added to create the illusion of sculptural depth. Painstaking detail places Spiral Bar as an endeavour of addictive compulsion.


Tal R

The Boots

2002
Paper Collage, Pen on Paper

29.5 x 59.5cm

Tal R sees his paintings as a form of storytelling. His drawings and paintings adopt a playful sophistication; in their faux innocence they present the everyday world infused with wonder. In The Boots, Tal R takes pleasure in rendering the clichéd clutter of an adolescent bedroom: cobra poster and druggie candles strive to stamp their identity over the mum and dad homeliness of potted plants and knickknacks. Tucked away in this nasty lair, Tal R's figure takes particular pleasure in his outlandish footwear.


Tal R

Tranquebar

2002-3
Pen on Paper

43 x 36cm

Tal R's drawings operate like highly rendered versions of the places his paintings might represent; half way between realism and its total corruption via the artist's imagination. Favoured motifs reoccur in different form, and recognisable imagery transforms into clunky geometry. In Tranquebar Tal R draws a scene of gothic fairytale proportion; his mystical village with wandering goat bears striking resemblance to a Mediterranean cemetery. The fragmented ground, made of collaged patches of paper, underscores this shifting illusion.



ARTIST INFORMATION




Tal R's BIOGRAPHY



1967
Born in Israel

1986-1988
Billedskolen Kopenhagen

1994-2000
Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Kopenhagen
Currently lives and works in Copenhagen

SELECTED
SOLO EXHIBITIONS


2005
Pink, Yellow, Brown, Black, Green, White, Red Galleri Nicolai
Wallner, Copenhagen

2004
House of Prince Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin

2003
New Born, But Same Old Phone Number Tal Esther
Gallery, Tel Aviv
Arcade BAWAG, Vienna
Lords of Kolbojnik Victoria Miro Gallery, London

2002
Ike og Ancher Horsens Kunstmuseum, Horsens

Fruitland Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach

2001
Lord Madras Hostrup-Pedersen & Johansen, Copenhagen
Live at Club Sombi Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin

2000
Dinglebær Galerie Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen

El Castilio Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus,
Für Immer Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen

Viva Ultra Holstebro Kunstmuseum, Holstebro

1999

Looket Horsens Kunstmuseum, Horsens
At the Foot of Mount Fuki Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin

1998
Bicycle Thieves Beret International Gallery, Chicago (with
Annika Strøm)

SELECTED
GROUP EXHIBITIONS


2003
10 Year Anniversary Exhibition
Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen

2002
The gallery show Royal Academy of Arts,
London Carnegie Art Award, Stockholm
Ars Fennica Henna and Pertti Niemistö Art Foundation,
Helsinki
Stop for a moment: Painting as Presence Wäino Aaltonen
Museum
Museum of Art, Turku, Finland

2001
artists from Berlin, Los Angeles and New York
Victoria Miro Gallery, London
Works on paper from Acconci to Zittel Victoria Miro Gallery,
London
TAKE OFF 20:01 Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus
Xanadu Forumbox, Helsinki

2000
Painterly: 11th Vilnius Painting Triennial
Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius
Organising Freedom: Nordic Art of the 90s Moderna Museet,
Stockholm
Duchamp’s Suitcase Arnolfini, Bristol
Fuori Uso 2000 / The Bridges Associazione Culturale Arte
Nova, Pescara

1999
Cities on the Move Louisiana
Museum for Moderne Kunst, Humlebæk
Scorpio Rising Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin
Big Red Galleri Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen
Gallery Swap: Contemporary Fine Arts at Sadie Coles HQ Sadie
Coles HQ, London

 
 

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