Strawberry, 2006
Bronze
72 x 25 x 32 cm
Courtesy CFA Berlin

TAL R is a master of the elevation and mystification of everyday life. Even his purportedly abstract paintings always tell stories whose protagonists are everyday objects.

The bronze sculptures by TAL R that have been emerging since 2004 are not formed by the artist’s hand in the classical sense. Pumpkins of various sizes form a column that tapers in the middle and recalls Brancusi’s endless column. Pumpkins are turned into heads, not dissimilar to the American Halloween custom. Interpretation is left to the viewer. Do fruits and vegetables, cast in bronze and mounted on bottles, celebrate simply the form, or do they make up a personnel which could have emerged from a child’s (bad) dream?

The tension in these new sculptures arises from the contrast between soft, morbid nature and hard bronze intended for an eternity.

TAL R often gives his paintings titles such as “Sisters of Kolbojnik” or “Lords of Kolbojnik”, the Yiddish word for garbage. His figures are a celebration of a culture of marginality, of what has been thrown away. With the new bronze sculptures, it is thus a matter not least of all of the manifestation of the age-old artist’s desire to take a stand against transience.

TAL R was born in Israel in 1967 and lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin.