Tal R interviewed in AnOther

Viewing Pop Culture Through Tal R’s 200 Collages. By Maisie Skidmore.

The artist's new Berlin show displays 20 years worth of archive material in the form of 200 collages, nimbly assembled by his "greedy hands".

As an artist, you’d think few things would be more exposing than laying out 20 years worth of source material for your viewers to see. For Copenhagen-based Tal R, however, whose new exhibition Garbage Man does exactly that, it’s almost a form of therapy. “It’s a library!” he says of the ever expanding archive of imagery he has acquired over the years, and which he condensed down into a series of some 200 collages for the show. “I never want to touch it again, I want to put it behind me.”

The pieces combine an eclectic and indiscriminate collection of cut-outs – from the carved contours of a penis on a classical statue, to a cartoon ship that might belong on a child’s cereal box – and unsurprisingly, it makes for very entertaining viewing. For Tal R, whose practice is often concerned with the seemingly naïve and childlike, it’s an opportunity to start afresh. Here he tells AnOther why the most important investment an artist can make is in their failure, and why the illusion of reinventing one's self is like "peeing in your pants."...

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