Seen? Valley R: "Owl"
1. The essence of this large-eyed something is puzzling: Is it an Easter egg dressed as an owl? An ancient Egyptian predecessor of the computer-animated Monster AG? Is it smiling? Is it sad? At first glance it looks nice, harmless and childlike - and then you do not know what to do with it.
2. The sculpture, which is about a year old, should be like a friendly handshake, says Tal R: "But if you stretch out your hand for it, you start to work and you want to say 'please give me my hand back.'"
3. So she is a multimedia handshake, the art of the 42-year-old, who is now shown in Tübingen under the title "You laugh at ugly laugh". It consists of collages, drawings, prints, showcases, sculptures, films - and his original medium, with which he was at war for a while: painting.
4. The R in the name of the artist stands for Rosenzweig. "Tal" means "dew". He is Israeli, born in Tel Aviv in 1967 during the Six-Day War.
5. When he was six years old, he moved with his parents to Copenhagen, where he graduated from high school, studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Arts and lives today. He also teaches to Hamburg and Helsinki now in Dusseldorf. 6. As a child, Tal R often felt between the chairs: for the Danes he had a funny name, in Israel he was also a stranger. This disruption is reflected in the many predetermined breaking points, in the not quite matching layers of figures like this.
7. Perhaps the language has become particularly important to him because he can hardly communicate in his native country. "It's about language, language, language", he emphasizes again and again. His art, he says, circles around sentences that he imagines, less about colors and feelings.
8. One word revolves around his art: Kolbojnik. In Israeli kibbutz this is the trash can, in Tal R a metaphor for his work. He is a great recycler, processing fabric from all over the world, magazines and slides.
9. He also recycles patterns and shapes. Whether cult masks from Africa, ornaments from Asia or 70s decorations - that high culture and commerce, meaningful and meaningless emptiness in him flow into each other, is exciting for him.
10. With his fabrics, he has recently redesigned an icon of design: the Jacobsen egg. The round armchair of the Danish Arne Jacobsen, famous for its simplicity, is now available in a patchwork cover - but only in a limited edition of 50 pieces (www.fritzhansen.com).
