Tal R

Victoria Miro, London
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2003

London, Victoria Miro, Tal R: Lors of Kolbojnik, 2003
London, Saatchi Gallery, New Blood, 2004

Exhibition Catalogue, London, Saatchi Gallery; Leeds, City Art Gallery, The Triumph of Painting, 2005-6, p. 166, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is much lighter and fresher in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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With its vivid colours and simple imagery, New Quarter presents us with a childlike portrait of a Latino barrio and its inhabitants: the bandito, the pimpish don, the scarred padre are all present and facing the viewer. Epitomical of Tal R’s most achieved and critically acclaimed paintings, New Quarter is divided into three horizontal bands, which are used by the artist as an optical stabilizer to the pictorial format and are inspired by both the landscape and the abstract tradition. The top and bottom layers, here representing the grass and the sky, act as a frame to the subject of the painting which can be anything but typically tell intimate tales in a 90’s graphic aesthetic. 

Tal R's recent exhibitions at the prestigious Kunsthalle in Dusseldorf or at Cheim & Reid Gallery in New York speak for this Israeli-born young Danish artist’s success, and more importantly of the art audience’s appetite for artists who manage to “breathe new life in the most familiar of aesthetic practices” (David Colman, “Danish Artist Tal R’s Vivid Paintings” in Architectural Digest, New York 2012).

Never entangled in over-intellectualized narratives, Tal R’s naive paintings make use of expressive brushstrokes and a playful painterly composition to reveal stories and give life to subjects which can never be too mundane or too banal, but are always joyous, humorous and sometimes autobiographical.