The Sum - Camden Art Centre

For this exhibition Tal R filled the galleries with a series of wild, colourful paintings and an installation of over 200 etchings.

Also included was a series of floor-based pedestals where his paintings become sculpture.

Tal R’s large scale exuberant paintings are built on a self-imposed system through which he challenges the fundamentals of painting using a fixed colour palette, often applied directly from the tube. Born in Israel in 1967, Tal R studied in Copenhagen where he continues to live.

Figurative elements, landscapes and people conflict with the imaginary spaces within his paintings; their surfaces are covered by characteristic blobs and small ‘worms’ of paint. Tal R tests his ordered approach with recurring elements, such as the beam and lintel structure, which is pushed and pulled around the surface and creates a stage into which you are invited to step.

Tal R has an extraordinary range of artistic activity, working in sculpture, music and publications, and often collaborating with other artists. His influences range from the performances of Bas Jan Ader to the drawings of Matisse, the dark history of The Holocaust to the intimacy of his own back garden and, most prominently, comic books and children’s doodling. Many of his artist’s books will be on display at Camden Arts Centre, and a new film in which he stars, called A Ship is not an Island (2007).

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