Tal R
23 Mar - 20 Apr 2013
© Tal R
Spine , 2010-2013
ceramic glazed
Work: 50x35x27 cm Artist made plinth: 36x47x32 cm Regular plinth: 70x27x32 cm
Spine , 2010-2013
ceramic glazed
Work: 50x35x27 cm Artist made plinth: 36x47x32 cm Regular plinth: 70x27x32 cm
TAL R
Egyptian Boy
23 March - 20 April 2013
Contemporary Fine Arts is pleased to present the exhibition „Egyptian Boy“ with new sculptures by Tal R.
With their artistic transgenre universality and patent radicalism, Tal R’s ceramic sculptures are embedded in a dense network of precursors and contemporaries. Tal R is fascinated and inspired by much older traditions of sculpture firmly rooted in religious and social behaviour. Most notably the votive offerings – i.e. body parts for healing purposes proffered in supplication; as an essential component in popular belief, they were numbered among the extraordinary archaeological finds from a Celtic river shrine dating from the first/second century AD at various points where the Seine rises in France and where hundreds of wooden figures have been excavated: heads, which had even been stacked in piles, hands, legs, torsos, posts and whole figures, often evincing the most rudimentary formation.
With the new sculptures, the artist formulates a “body alphabet” of items that sometimes come very close to the votive figures in formal terms. Their gaudy colourfulness and shiny glazes render them unmistakable, and they too oscillate between individuality and anonymity. They are imbued with an existential quality, but at the same time, they are fun and light.
Tal R’s Egyptian Boy is situated precisely at this critical interface. His sculptures are both absolute, individual inventions and yet anonymously valid formulations. They are equally interesting when viewed individually and, indeed, when one reflects intellectually upon their integration into the artist’s overall work and into a rich sculptural tradition, or when one experiences their abundance in a studio space or a closely staged exhibition.
Above all, Tal R’s sculptures are great fun. His aesthetic obsessions, his insatiable appetite for images is as existential as it is entertaining. His sculptures are naive and refined at the same time; they offer both the informed and curious viewer a wealth of associations and direct experiences. They are simultaneously virtuosic and amateurish, reflective and genuine, artificial and authentic, vulgar and absolute, pure childlike innocence. Who could ask for more?
(Excerpt from the catalogue text by Kay Heymer
Egyptian Boy
23 March - 20 April 2013
Contemporary Fine Arts is pleased to present the exhibition „Egyptian Boy“ with new sculptures by Tal R.
With their artistic transgenre universality and patent radicalism, Tal R’s ceramic sculptures are embedded in a dense network of precursors and contemporaries. Tal R is fascinated and inspired by much older traditions of sculpture firmly rooted in religious and social behaviour. Most notably the votive offerings – i.e. body parts for healing purposes proffered in supplication; as an essential component in popular belief, they were numbered among the extraordinary archaeological finds from a Celtic river shrine dating from the first/second century AD at various points where the Seine rises in France and where hundreds of wooden figures have been excavated: heads, which had even been stacked in piles, hands, legs, torsos, posts and whole figures, often evincing the most rudimentary formation.
With the new sculptures, the artist formulates a “body alphabet” of items that sometimes come very close to the votive figures in formal terms. Their gaudy colourfulness and shiny glazes render them unmistakable, and they too oscillate between individuality and anonymity. They are imbued with an existential quality, but at the same time, they are fun and light.
Tal R’s Egyptian Boy is situated precisely at this critical interface. His sculptures are both absolute, individual inventions and yet anonymously valid formulations. They are equally interesting when viewed individually and, indeed, when one reflects intellectually upon their integration into the artist’s overall work and into a rich sculptural tradition, or when one experiences their abundance in a studio space or a closely staged exhibition.
Above all, Tal R’s sculptures are great fun. His aesthetic obsessions, his insatiable appetite for images is as existential as it is entertaining. His sculptures are naive and refined at the same time; they offer both the informed and curious viewer a wealth of associations and direct experiences. They are simultaneously virtuosic and amateurish, reflective and genuine, artificial and authentic, vulgar and absolute, pure childlike innocence. Who could ask for more?
(Excerpt from the catalogue text by Kay Heymer