Painted during the pandemic, Untitled Flowers, 2021,  is one of a number of works united by subject matter that seem to foreground a domestic sphere that might serve to define the limits of our recent lives. Each depicts a bunch of flowers picked by the artist from around his home in the Danish countryside, presented in a vase on a table top within a closely cropped interior space. Flowers in vases are, of course, a kind of contained beauty, a domesticated wildness, nature tamed, and in this context they, perhaps unavoidably, can be considered as memento mori, a poetic reminder that our time is fleeting. The artist would always prefer to talk about his work in terms of what he defines as ‘painter’s mathematics’ – for example, how a stem goes into a vase, or hits the water. And yet, as he concedes, ‘I think if you talk to a mathematician very late at night, he would say mathematics is very emotional. It’s actually a way of way of organising the world. And I’m also into that. I’m trying to organise things that have too many details.’

About the artist

Born in Tel Aviv in 1967, Tal R lives and works in Copenhagen. Recently, the artist has held solo presentations at Ordrupgaard, Charlottenlund, Denmark (2021); Glyptoteket, Copenhagen, Denmark (2020–2021); Magasin II, Jaffa, Israel (2019); Hastings Contemporary, Hastings, UK (2019) and MOCAD, Detroit (2019). His major survey Academy of Tal R opened at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark in 2017, touring to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Previous solo exhibitions have been staged at institutions including ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark (2013–2014); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2013); Kunstverein in Hamburg (2011) and Camden Arts Centre, London (2008), amongst others. Tal R held a Professorship at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 2005–2014.