Tal R - The Virgin

ARoS is proud to present THE VIRGIN - the largest museum exhibition to date featuring works by Danish artist Tal R.

Early on in his career, Tal R became an internationally recognised name, paving the way for young 21st century painting with a keen sense of colour and composition. Over the past 10 years, he has exhibited at numerous museums and art institutions around the world. In Denmark, his efforts have been recognised by, among other things, asking him to decorate the Opera on Holmen and Frederik VIII's Palace, the residence of the Crown Prince Couple at Amalienborg.

With a special focus on the pigment paintings that Tal R began in the late 2000s, the exhibition THE VIRGIN highlights the continuity and breaks in Tal R's extensive production. In the late 2000s, Tal R hit a wall. But it was a wall he had to hit. Because in the years since he entered the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 1994, he had been busy. In the early years, it wasn't a time crunch that weighed him down, but a mental quest to find himself as an artist. Despite having drawn since he was a child, becoming an artist did not come easily to him. Partly in resignation, partly in defiance, one evening he began to poke at the canvas with a wet brush and put daubs of paint on the painting, like boogers on a wall. This mischievous act, this artistic dead end, was the start of the new colourful and figurative painting that would later make him world famous.

Today, two decades later, Tal R is still busy, but now he just has to keep up with the massive demand for his art. And the dead ends have become a big part of what drives him as an artist. It is often here that he finds space for the artistic shifts and breakthroughs that characterise his body of work. Although many of Tal R's motifs recur from his early works to his latest paintings and collages, he constantly challenges himself with new techniques, media and motifs.

The exhibition TAL R - THE VIRGIN combines over 30 of Tal R's recent large-scale paintings with an almost encyclopaedic collection of drawings, prints and monumental collages, some created especially for the exhibition at ARoS. The exhibition paints a picture of a curious and playful artist for whom an ending always equals a new beginning, and where a mountain climbed is merely the foot of a new one. Like a charming and unstoppable picture whore who meets each new challenge as a virgin.

To accompany the exhibition, ARoS will publish a large, illustrated publication in Danish/English containing texts about Tal R's artistic practice with contributions from the internationally recognised art writer Barry Schwabsky, Chief Curator at ARoS Marie Nipper and the Danish author and poet Søren Ulrik Thomsen.

The catalogue will be distributed in collaboration with the renowned and worldwide publisher, Walter König.

Tal R, b. Rosenzweig, was born in Israel, but moved with his family to Denmark as a child. In 2002, just two years after graduating from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, he was awarded the prestigious international Carnegie Art Award. In 2004, he was awarded the Danish Medal of Honour, the Eckersberg Medal, and over the years he has held visiting professorships at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Hamburg and Düsseldorf, among others.

In connection with Tal R's exhibition, ARoS is entering into a unique collaboration with Danmarks Radio to produce a portrait film about the artist. The film is conceived and directed by award-winning director Daniel Dencik, whose film Moon Rider about cyclist Rasmus Quaade earned him Denmark's 2012 Talent of the Year award in the documentary film genre.