Tal R: the sum

Tal R (born in 1967 in Tel Aviv, Israel, but has lived in Denmark since he was one year old) is an artist from the generation of the 1990s at the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen who has had a remarkable career in recent years.

From the outset he went his own way and insisted on painting at a time when painting was on something of a back burner in certain parts of the art world; but today he is one of the most sought-after artists – abroad as well as in Denmark – because of the new breakthrough in the status of painting in contemporary art of which he is a very important representative.

The exhibition - a project Tal R, who has just turned 40 years, has reached a point in his career where he is to some extent taking stock with this project at Louisiana. The 17 paintings of the exhibition, five of which are brand new and created specifically for this show, complete his long-standing project that has been unfolding since 2004.

As a kind of selfimposed rule, or professional handicap if you like, Tal R has chosen seven colours as a basis for the works – brown, red, black, white, pink, yellow and green – in order to focus deliberately on the fundamental principles of painting. All the works measure 2.5 x 2.5 m.

But Tal R is by no means a ‘system-painter’. With his romantic, sometimes exceedingly laid-back painting style, he is too fond of narrative and storytelling for that. Using a splashing brush and slapdash layering he paints gleefully in impossible materials, with undisguised clashes and references in the content both to broader cultural and historical currents and to the private sphere.

- to say something with, not about painting The aim is to say something with painting, not about painting. This balance between narrative and quite fundamental exercises in the basic scales of painting provides the cornerstones of the museum’s exhibition.

Besides the 17 paintings shown in museum’s South Wing, the exhibition presents a major graphics project and seven showcases in each of the above-mentioned seven colours which enter into a dialogue with the artist’s work.

Tal R Tal R graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2000. In 2004 he received the Eckersberg Medal for his “contribution of high artistic quality in the free arts”. The past two years Tal R has held the position of visiting professor at to the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf.

European tour The project at Louisiana will subsequently be shown at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht and the Camden Arts Centre in London. The exhibition at Louisiana begins the artist’s first major European tour.

Special catalogue For the exhibition Louisiana is publishing a special catalogue in English featuring an extended text by curator Anders Kold entitled “The Waiting Room”.

Tal R: the sum