Tal R Interview: Painting is like Free Falling

“Art is the only place I can bear disappointment,” says Danish artist Tal R, who paints sex shops and dreams of making a clay pigeon fly. Meet one of Denmark’s leading artists in this engaging and humorous interview on the nature of art.
Even at the height of his career painting is still the most challenging thing Tal R has ever done. Requiring equal measures of careful planning and risk, painting is “like free-falling with the idea in your pocket,” he says. The ultimate aim is that the painting “unwraps your idea in a way you didn’t see coming.”
Tal R is widely considered to be one of the main forces in bringing painting back after conceptual art dominated the art scene in the 1990s. Deeply inspired by Matisse, his work is a negotiation of the flat surface of the canvas in which figuration becomes form and deeply intimate things become neutral. His latest series of drawings are intimate portraits that are remodelled into painting. “It’s fun to take something that starts out very intimate and draw again and again until they’re just elements that you can pick out and orchestrate,” the artist explains.
Strongly coloured, the often quotidian motifs of Tal R’s work can seem undramatic. In the artist’s opinion painting is “the perfect medium for the mundane” because painting is banal in nature, paint and canvas struggling to create a likeness with the world. “Artists depict what being alive is from where they stand,” he says. “They understand that you can have a private starting point, but a work of art can’t be private. It starts as a private thing and ends up being public.”
Tal R (b. 1967) is a Danish painter and former guest professor at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. His work has been shown internationally, e.g. at ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich and Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany, Camden Arts Centre, London, UK, and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark, where he will also present a major solo exhibition in 2017.
Tal R was interviewed by Martin Krasnik at the Art Alive festival at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, in May 2016.
Camera: Jakob Solbakken, Simon Weyhe, Mathias Nyholm
Produced and Edited by: Kasper Bech Dyg
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2017
Supported by Nordea-fonden
FOLLOW US HERE!
Website: channel.louisiana.dk
Facebook: / louisianachannel
Instagram: / louisianachannel
Twitter: / louisianachann

[@tonsfocus]

I've found that Tal R describes the rigors of art making better than almost anyone. So much he says rings a bell regarding the creative process. I've typed up my favorite passages from this excellent on stage interview, so others can cut-and-paste to share. Thank you so much Louisiana Channel! *** First of all, the worst thing you can do - unless you’re Buddha or Jesus, which few of us are - is to stand in front of a blank canvas and just feel and do. If you do that, the result will be very predictable - because you will tap into what comes naturally to you. You must have something in your pocket, some idea of what you want to do. It’s like going to a silver anniversary. Don’t bring a finished speech. Know what you want to say, but don’t prepare how to say it. Painting is like free-falling with the idea in your pocket. The painting should unwrap that idea in a way you didn’t see coming. The rush of it is the debate you have with yourself. You unwrap something by posing questions. You don’t have an idea that you want to carry out. I’d never have become an artist then. I love it because it’s the most challenging thing I know. It’s where I utilize most of my skills and take the best plunge. When you set out to do a painting by thinking about the colors - then you’ve already gone astray. Much of what you do should be predetermined. 50% should be predetermined. There must be a need for the painting. The painting has certain needs, it wants certain colors and shapes. …The more requirements a painting has, the harder it is to paint. It’s what breaks young artists every time, all their ideas. The process of painting is confronting all those ideas. Your idea is to place the objects like this. When you begin, it all comes apart. You have to develop a new language, new shapes and ideas, because your idea is overruled by the things that have to fall into place. They lie behind your idea of how to go about it. But at the end of the day, I don’t care. I just want the painting to work out. Sometimes you remember things and… It’s like a catchy tune. You look ahead and do a variant. And whenever it turns around and spits you in the face, you’re happy. You want to lose yourself. It’s more fun to create something you hadn’t seen coming, yet you want to stay within the framework. You have an idea of what you want to say, but you don’t know how. You’ve also gone astray if you crave the struggle. Then you’re an idiot. If you crave the struggle, the struggle becomes your idea, your challenge. This is the right mindset: I need to say something, plunge myself into it. You have to say: I don’t want to struggle; I want to deliver. I want my idea to unfold. But your training, your instrument offers resistance.

[@vootee1]

What a great find. Cheers to Tal R. and the Louisiana Channel.

[@clamda]

always like listening to The Tal

[@lemoneid100]

very insightful interview thank you

[@vatchesolakian6361]

What a chatterbox

[@olusha]

The conversation is interesting given the initial topic regarding the nature of speaking about painting. Especially the part about the whorehouse, as most of the audience members in the field of view appear to be women. It's such points when I agree with Martin that attempting to discuss painting can be silly (unrelatable for your audience). On the other hand I like the quote "...painting should unwrap that idea (in your pocket) in a way you didn't see coming...".

[@callu6528]

i love that guy

[@geostk3659]

nobody remembers those painters and those kind of art after 10 years. So mediocre artist.

[@dynastie8647]

jokes on you