Tal R Interview: The Moon Above Copenhagen

the overall title is sorted um which is a bit difficult to translate to English it's something like black pawn Black Lake Black River black some kind of water which is the lakes here in Copenhagen it's the moon reflecting in water which is close to the most stupid thing you can try to do as a painter first of all if you have a moon reflecting in water it means you have two holes and it just makes everything around those who holds very complicated you have to invent some kind of way in and way out of a painting like that and I have to say before this painting I did so many other trials just to grasp the idea of two circles one there and one there and the relationship between something happening up there that has a reaction down there I always walk in or everything every day I walk parallel to the lakes here and every day I just I just look at them and I had this idea I always loved the name sorted out it has it had this kind of underdressed drama and then you know I just you know at least every month the moonrise and it reflects if there's not too many clouds and there was one specific night where the moon was it was just so simple the moon was just really bright on the sky and bright in the river and everybody who passed by just stopped there there was nothing to say it's just you just stopped there that is like really really difficult to paint something that gives you this feeling it's like saying that the color of love is red it's also stupid but also exactly right it's exactly right like a pop song can be more right than Shakespeare there are two things that rise above the earth there is the Sun and I guess we live more from the Sun than we live from the moon but the Sun is also quite rejecting because you're going to burn your eyes if you look into it so anybody in the history of art who tried to paint the Sun this sort of was on the track of either nudism or fascism because you cannot look into the Sun so if you do it then you think you are over human you're like a perfect race somehow because nobody looks into the Sun so if a painter paints the Sun these are the crazy or crazy so the moon is somehow more for us it rise at night and nighttime is somebody say the eight-time is more clever than nighttime other people would say the opposite but somehow nighttime is a clever time I don't think this the Sun sees anything I think the moon sees a lot I said when the tide was now this next finding is called fuel and fuel is just short for this old Street in Copenhagen it's called fuel store and for some reason there's hanging ahead there I don't think that they produce hats there so this hat is just there like a ghost from another era and a friend of mine looked at it and he said yeah in the city and that means every city you know it's always the living and the dead that is walking around because the living ones you see but you also sense the dead ones your sense that there are certain part of the city suddenly you walk down the street and there's a certain angle somebody forgot that suddenly that belongs to an era that is over just for some reason nobody really cleaned it away luckily so in a city it's the living and the dead walking around and appending like this it's about this feeling that you know you stop for a second one this is also I don't know why I don't know if it's obvious but it's also like a knight painting it's also like a moon painting and also here there are things that repeats itself there's this far too big hat and this black sign and although it's not two circles it's still this thing repeating you don't know what this sign is for and you don't know what the head is for I put a lot of drops of things that are almost not paint in this painting I put like aluminum or kind of metals in the very beginning of the process and those metals are quite difficult to paint over they kind of keep coming true they are like a spot on your shirt that you know you never can change you can never get it away it just keeps coming back you wash it with whatever kind of chemistry and it will still be there so these metal spots keep going through the pain and make the painting that is somewhat something unsettled but it's just for a short while it's on the canvas it's almost just in the air and that's something to do with this whole atmosphere of walking off you know the living people and the dead people did Jambi see some gold yeah this is a an old wine shop it doesn't run anymore but it still has the paintings of the bottles and it's kind of a facade that for some reason is also forgotten one day you're going to pass by and there is a shop for telephones so it's something almost slipping away and although we still understand ok bottles that mean you can go and buy a bottle of wine there it's also just slipping into complete abstraction it's just a few things that hold onto reality in this painting most of this painting is just slipping into a place where we can't maneuver anymore only people are not here anymore they can maneuver with those coats and signs when you pick something it's because it hasn't they just have a very banal interaction on you something where you think ok here's like here's a chance I mean I'm opportunistic all the time just looking for chances for something to paint and the chance means for me something I can rhyme on something that clicks with me something I can work with and this kind of flatness of this and these flat bottles that this almost like a pattern it's almost like a carpet it's completely flat and then it has these meanings it goes between flatness and something I like this a lot and I also seem to like things that are almost disappearing something that is just slipping between our fingers something appears in front of your eyes and it's there for a second and you are you'd like to be touched by it but you also touch by it because it moves away immediately there is all these different speeds in a city there are moments between people a certain kind of smell certain windows only there for second and then there is these things like a facade like a shop that changes like over years and it's the same destiny for every facade at a certain moment it's their fresh reflecting completely all our ambitions and after a short time it's just gone it doesn't and after it's gone nobody understands it anymore nobody really knows only that people will know what this facade means what these signs are for so when you are trying to paint you you want and understand and you want and understand nothing yeah this is one of the last ones I did from these Copenhagen paintings and it's a in a way a misfit because it's an image of a gate that doesn't exist anymore it was I think it disappeared 100 years ago it's vesturport the West Gate here that it how it used to look 100 years ago the overall idea of having these places in the city that you move into that that doesn't exist or is slipping away or you feel that you're walking down one Street and you turn right into an alley and you're just lost there by having an image that doesn't exist anymore maybe catch this atmosphere even better than the image where the places still exist and these ghost characters ready to pass through the gate going into this paint building on the other side of the gate it's just such a perfect image that I had I was I had no defense when I I saw it I just needed to do this one and the whole gate just looks like some big monster ready you can walk into and you're just going to get swollen forever I need a gate well all the dead people all the people who's not here anymore but they passed through and since this gate doesn't exist anymore this is from the world of absolute dead this painting is a key to the other paintings it is really if you don't get it in the moon you will get it in the gate for sure I think I basically always wanted to do AdWords which is about my surroundings about what I experience what I see something so simple that you almost don't want to say it it's like to do to do a painting about what is just around you it's what you start with and then you put it away for years because that's just too simple but in a way to do something like this that the artwork is something really really close to something that I do a painting and people they can take that bike and go down and look at this place it's I don't know how to explain it something very magic about it something impossible something more market than my good all of these places that I paint they mean something and they also mean nothing it means that these are places I'm very familiar with that I walk by many times it makes MIT much more easy for me to rhyme in those places and although this is about places in copening it could actually be anywhere and if I would have if I would grow up in another city I would rhyme on other places because these things like a tall hat or a moon all these places in a way only exist when you rhyme on them otherwise yeah this is just a hat because there used to be a shop that produce hats they are just all the informations a window is just the window so people can get air into the buildings but when you rhyme on them you give them different meanings you open up that they are something else but actually my my way of working with the city is not so intimate that you would imagine it's actually much more ghost-like it's like I look at these places that's all they will disappear any second it's in my brain it it's very different from what it looks like it's much more echo politic I imagine that this is over in a second and that I just look at it for a while I open my eyes and it's the end then I will close them again and it's gone so it's it's a mix of a brutal distance and something very intimate

Channel: Louisiana Channel

Views: 46,040

Rating: 4.8455286 out of 5

Keywords: Louisiana Museum Of Modern Art, painting, painter, Louisiana, Tal R, Fiol, moon, Modern Art, art, Danish, Museum, Sortedammen, Denmark, Copenhagen, artist

Id: ZeU6in3j40c

Length: 14min 47sec (887 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2013