Tal R: Chimney school of sculpture, Victoria Miro

Tal R art and career
Over at the North London outpost of Victoria Miro, Copenhagen-based artist Tal R explores the line between art and life with a veritable smorgasbord of new work. You may know Tal R for his 'opiumbeds', sofas covered with old and new rugs from Scandanavia that are treated with paint and dye. Domestic furniture and high art meet in these strange pieces, which you can expect at Victoria Miro's latest show. Something of a Jack of all Trades that uses both high and low culture, this Scandinavian artist often makes vividly colourful works that blend bright pigment with rabbit-skin glue.
Victoria Miro | Tal R 2015 exhibition
The Victoria Miro exhibition is hugely varied with sculpture, furniture, paintings and works on paper that feel completely at odds, and yet find harmony in a single aesthetic style. This is very in keeping with Tal R's work, which he describes as 'kolbojnik' - meaning 'leftovers' in Hebrew.
Ceramic creatures made from a process called 'Raku firing' (an ancient Japanese 16th century method) inhabit the lower gallery, where the material is so volatile it can either be extremely black or white and liable to explode. You'll also discover striped, fabric-covered wood pieces which appear like giant industrial chimneys. Out of action, there is no logic to the objects and certainly no industrial purpose. Instead they feel benign and joyful. Upstairs Tal R creates a dark makeshift corridor space filled with paintings and works on paper depicting a closed blind, drawing together ideas of enclosed space and our inward looking egotism.
Tal R's hugely varied practice is a strange new playground at Victoria Miro which is well worth paying a visit.