Tal R

Working across a diverse range of media including painting, drawing, print, textiles, sculpture and furniture, Tal R questions our conceptions of and presumptions about our surrounding reality – what we’re seeing and where its meaning lies. Often, he employs apparently simple compositional devices and motifs from everyday life to create complex, atmospheric worlds that, beginning with the recognisable and known, expand or collapse into spaces of enchantment or ambiguity, heady with atmosphere and colour.

Deceptively quotidian, his paintings bring into play what the artist describes as ‘painter’s mathematics’– how a flower stem goes into a vase or hits the water, for example – while criss-crossing the boundaries between depiction and invention, life and art, looking and really seeing. Sculpture has long been an integral part of Tal R’s practice. For the artist its presence – material and metaphorical – has led to an extended consideration of things we might label as ‘objects’ exerting themselves as ‘beings’ in the shared physical realm of an exhibition space. Shaped in clay, cast in plaster or moulded in bronze, they draw the viewer into their tactile surfaces, inviting us to consider mysteries of origin and meaning.

About the Artist

Born in Tel Aviv in 1967, Tal R moved to Denmark with his family as a child. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, graduating in 2000, and continues to live and work in the city.

Recent solo institutional exhibitions include Tal R: The Wrong Side, an exhibition of sculptures and drawings,on view at Artipelag, Stockholm, Sweden (2022). A two-person exhibition, Tal R & Mamma Andersson – About Hill, was recently on view at Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden (until 1 October 2023) and was previously on display at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg, Denmark (14 October 2022–10 April 2023).

Solo presentation of the artist’s work have previously been held at Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen, Denmark (2021); Glyptoteket, Copenhagen, Denmark (2020–21); Magasin III, Jaffa, Israel (2019); Hastings Contemporary, Hastings, UK (2019); MOCAD, Detroit (2019). His major survey Academy of Tal R opened at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark in 2017, touring to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Earlier solo exhibitions have been staged at institutions including ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark (2013–14); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2013); Kunstverein in Hamburg (2011) and Camden Arts Centre, London (2008), amongst others. Tal R held a Professorship at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 2005–14.

His work is held in public collections including: ARKEN, Ishøj, Denmark; ARoS Århus Denmark; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA; Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, Netherlands; Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, New York, USA; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Goetz Collection, München, Germany; Hammer Contemporary Collection, Los Angeles, USA; Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland; Kunsten, Ålborg, Denmark; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; Magasin III, Stockholm, Sweden; Moderne Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; ; Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA.