Tal R at Tim Van Laere Gallery

Artist: Tal R

Exhibition title: Home Alone

Venue: Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium

Date: March 19 – June 6, 2020

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp

Tim Van Laere Gallery is pleased to present its first solo exhibition by Tal R, entitled Home Alone.

The exhibition includes a new series of paintings, gouaches and drawings.

Tal R (°Tel Aviv, Israel. Lives and works in Copenhagen) transforms everything in his environment into art. His works are known for their daring colors and vivid imagery. Tal R works with a variety of techniques and media including painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, print and fur-niture. Tal R is a keen observer, who takes inspiration from reality as well as his imagination. His work fits within the northern European tradition of Edvard Munch, Asger Jorn, Per Kirkeby and Georg Baselitz. Historical and art-historical references are abundant: threads of expressionism, fauvism and symbolism continue, as well as a nod to traditional Scandinavian art, art nouveau, outsider art and children’s paintings. Tal R’s enigmatic work oﬀers intersections of personal expe-rience and wider history through a visual jigsaw, finely balanced between representation and ab-straction, of what the artist has termed ‘Kolbojnik,’ a Hebrew term for leftovers. His unique vision, self-identification as an outsider and ability to sample the two worlds of his diﬀerent heritages, has produced an artistic language that constantly questions our surrounding realities.

According to Tal R one can easily describe the subject of his works over the phone. In Home Alone Tal shows a series of birds in their cages and a series of still lifes. The titles of the works refer to the literary work of Bruno Schulz. In his Cinnamon Shops, a collection of interlinked sto-ries, the most prosaic elements of everyday life become fantastic, full of mystery, capable of con-taining and at times revealing the deepest secrets of existence. Each story floats between the re-alism of his own autobiography and a fantastical fiction. In one of his stories Schulz tells about his father’s collection of a colony of birds in the attic, which served as an inspiration to Tal’s series of birds in their cage. Tal’s birds are delicately balanced between representation and abstraction, with abstract shapes and fields of color. The linings of the cage divide the canvas and provide structure to the stacking of diﬀerent paint colors. In his series of still lifes, Tal depicts a series of objects that have been carefully arranged on a table top. These objects are as familiar as they are estranged. They are the objects that have been taken from their initial place and lost their name. Just like in Disney Pixar’s Toy Story, where the toys come to live as soon as the door closes, Tal gives these objects new life by painting or drawing them. Many of these objects carry references towards the stories of Schulz, but just like the author Tal’s interest is not so much in the story itself but in a proces of regeneration.

Tal R has exhibited internationally, institutional solo exhibitions were held at: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Netherlands; Hastings Contemporary, UK; Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, USA; Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; Pinakothek der Moderne, Germany; Museum Kunstpalast, Germany; Magasin III Museum & Foundation for Contemporary Art, Sweden; Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Germany; Kunsthalle Tübingen, Germany; Holste-bro Kunstmuseum, Denmark; Essl Museum, Austria; Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca, Mexi-co; Centro Cultural dos Correios, Brazil; Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany; Statens Museum for Kunst, Denmark; Horsens Kunstmuseum, Denmark; Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark, among many others. Tal R’s work is included in many notable collections worldwide, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum Kunstpalast, Germany; The Art Institute of Chicago, USA; Essl Muse-um, Austria; Magasin III Museum & Foundation for Contemporary Art, Sweden; Bonnefanten Mu-seum, Holland; Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Finland, and many private collections.

Tal R, Home Alone, 2020, exhibition view, Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp