The Look is part of a series of works Tal R made on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name at Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo in 2007. He installed five objects and seven paintings in a gallery space, in which he played through different colour tones and variations of form. Using central pictorial elements such as the bar in the lower part of the picture defining a top and a bottom, Tal R gives colour a foothold in the form and gives the game some rules.
Tal R, a Danish artist born in Tel Aviv in 1967, collects set pieces from television, comics, old video game graphics and music. This collecting, which he calls ‘ophobning’ (accumulation), forms the basis for numerous artist’s books as well as his paintings and collages.
Tal R (*1967)
The Look, 2007
Currently exhibited: Yes (Gallery: The Beat Goes On)
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 200.5 x 200 cm
Inv-Nr.: B_383
Keywords:
Previous owner: Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin; unknown; Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo
Acquisition: Reinhard Ernst Collection, Christie’s, Amsterdam, 2017
Solo exhibition:
Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
The Look is part of a series of works Tal R made on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name at Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo in 2007. He installed five objects and seven paintings in a gallery space, in which he played through different colour tones and variations of form. All the pictorial elements are arranged on a white ground and are grounded by a bar at the bottom of the picture. The various shapes in the painting are structured by stripe patterns. Shapes and stripes repeat in different sizes and arrangements, creating a tension between regularity and free combination.
In 2005, Tal R described his pictorial structure and relationship to abstraction as follows: ‘An abstract floating picture surface could never satisfy me. So I use a line to define the to and fro, the up and down – Mr. Newton alias gravity. The next step is the image field. And then there is the surface and sometimes paint residue. It’s stupid, but I think it’s great when an abstract floating picture surface comes out of it.’ [1] These elements of pictorial construction can also be clearly seen in The Look – the attempt to give colour a foothold in the form, to give the game some rules.
Tal R, a Danish artist born in Tel Aviv in 1967, collects set pieces from television, comics, old video game graphics and music. This collecting, which he calls ‘ophobning’ (accumulation), forms the basis for numerous artist’s books as well as for his paintings, objects, and collages. Explicit references to other painters are rarely to be found in his works and always on a par with other real influences. The reference to the real is obscured, but is as important to his artistic practice as the constant ‘change, movement through different styles, formats and materials’ [2] Without declaring his work as a necessary next step in the development of painting, his radical self-questioning and his own artistic mobility connect Tal R to painters such as Lee Krasner.
[1] In: ‘”You need to shut yourself up”: Tal R in conversation with Terry R. Myers’, in: Academy of Tal R, ed. by Anders Kold, ex. cat. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk 2017, p. 115–124, here p. 118.
[2] Tal R im Gespräch mit Rainald Schumacher, April 2005, aus: Imagination becomes reality, Part 1 Expanded paint tools, ed. by Ingvild Goetz, ex. cat. Sammlung Goetz, Hamburg 2005, pp. 82–86, here p. 83.
