TAL R
Over the past decade Louisiana has established a distinctive collection of works – especially paintings – by the Danish artist Tal R (b. 1967). It is therefore natural to round off the Louisiana trilogy of contemporary artists with painting as their central practice: Peter Doig in 2015, Daniel Richter in 2016 and with Tal R in 2017.
Since the 1990s Tal R, as one of the most striking artists of his generation, has exhibited all around the world, particularly in Europe, and his art appears in many central collections. It is evident from the exhibition, which scans his work of the past twenty years and also shows a series of brand new works, that while as a painter, printmaker and sculptor he clearly roots his art in the material, as a storyteller, too, he has from the outset had a keen eye for the neglected, hidden and marginalized spaces of modern life.
The exhibition title Academy of Tal R should be understood as a mildly humorous provocation, since Tal R’s artwork always appears free, wild, searching, vital and simply unacademic. Through an overview of his work from the past twenty years and a series of new works, the exhibition shows that Tal R from the outset has been a storyteller with a special eye for the overlooked, hidden and repressed spaces of modern life. In his art and thinking, Tal R is constantly interested in everything that goes against conformity.
Image: Tal R, Academy of Tal R, installation view, © the artist, courtesy Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
