Tal R - Egyptian Boy

Kay Heymer calls the artist TAL R the »devourer of images« whose new group of ceramic sculptures invokes a number predecessors, such as André Derain, Alberto Giacometti, Willem de Kooning, Jean Fautrier, Hans Josephson, Georg Baselitz and Günther Förg. Each of them have, in their own respective ways in their sculptures, and often in apparent naivety, ­studied the boundaries of form and the beginnings of figuration based on body or body parts ­directly moulded from their chosen materials: Derain, de Kooning, Fautrier and Förg, for example, on the basis of heads or masks; Josephson and ­Baselitz using amorphous torsos; Giacometti and Baselitz in relation to individual hands, legs and feet. TAL R has devoured this tradition as quickly as he has regurgitated it, and, like his colleagues, he is fascinated and inspired by much older traditions of sculpture firmly rooted in religious and social behaviour. Including and primarily votive offerings  – body parts for healing purposes proffered in ­supplication, which can be found in their hundreds, often stacked in piles, across the world from the Seine in France to the Northeast of Brazil, as a sign of magical folk beliefs. TAL R’s sculptures, his ­reformulations, are simultaneously naïve and refined, virtuosic and amateurish, reflective and genuine, artificial and authentic, vulgar and absolute, pure childlike innocence. »Who could ask for more?« Kay Heymer rightly asks!