CIRCA 111 review

Dublin: Tal R at Douglas Hyde Gallery

More satisfying intellectually than aesthetically, House of Prince by Israeli / Danish artist Tal R is an initially overwhelmingly abstract and, on the surface, arbitrary collection of works. Caught between order and chaos (the nomos and physis of Greek philosophy), the approximately two hundred elements to the installation are hung floor-to-ceiling, and create a vibrant display against three walls at the end of the Douglas Hyde Gallery’s main space. There is a cacophony of colour and an intense, teeming sense of overload. Chairs waiting in the space invite longer contemplation, although the initial impulse can be to retreat from such clamour and discord. The mind seeks a sense of order, however, and before long patterns begin to make their presence felt. It is this conflict, or agon (the Greek word at the root of our ‘agony’), between the sense of chaos and the desire to find a structure, which animates a viewing of the installation.

Tal R: House of Prince, 2004, installation view, mixed media, Douglas Hyde Gallery; courtesy Douglas Hyde Gallery

Focusing on representational painting can reveal certain underlying patterns such as, as Cézanne famously advised Emile Bernard in 1904, “the cylinder, the sphere, the cone.” In House of Prince, the crazy presentation of shape and hue masks an order as structured as a Cézanne, and as rigid and regular as any Mondrianesque distillation of form. Here the recurring geometries are a panel at the base, and four triangular corner shapes surrounding the centre field. This holds, whether the work is a painting, a collage, or a panel of light bulbs, glowing at points throughout the piece.

For the ancient Greeks, order came from the Gods, and the arts which regulate wild nature take their inspiration from the divine. Thus the inherent mysticism of House of Prince is in its reduction of vision and imagination to the regularity of each image. The tension created in the installation lies in the drama between the mistaken sense of freedom of form, and the realisation that everything is based on the same blueprint. One can do as one likes, but only according to pre-set patterns and rules; total freedom is frightening but (thankfully?) merely illusory.

House of Prince was created in an annexe toTal R’s studio, and in composition these pieces mirror the basic structure that characterises the artist’s main body of work. Thus House of Prince is an installation investigating and commenting on works not here on display. Intriguing perhaps, but less satisfying without some of them on view, to illuminate the illustration. Almost always anchored by a base strip, Tal R’s bright and playful images have their roots in CoBrA and the ‘primitive’ forms of childish and Outsider art. Luring us in by the colours and shapes, Tal R’s paintings harbour darker presences, their diverse narratives undermined by the recurrence of the basic structure underpinning them all. As with this installation, our seeming-liberty to create our own stories always takes place within an unshakable framework.

Tal R’s work is to be featured in Part Two of Saatchi’s ‘rediscovery’ of painting exhibition, which opens in London in June this year. Most of us are still surprised to hear it ever went away.

Gemma Tipton is a writer on art and architecture, and editor of CONTEXTS magazine

Tal R: House of Prince, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, December 2004 - February 2005

Article reproduced from CIRCA 111, Spring 2005, p.82

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