(i) The Boots(ii) Inside Out(iii) Birth of Laughing Chinaman(iv) Shamotte

Tal R’s ballpoint works celebrate the storytelling magic of object and setting. Inside Out portrays a bohemian female sculptor at work in her studio, crowded with arcane herbs, feathers, mushrooms and large clay pots: a tongue-in-cheek image of clichéd New Age creativity. The Boots depicts an adolescent bedroom in similarly faux-naïve style, likewise packed with playful detail. There is a poster of a cobra on the wall, a katana among various kitsch shelf ornaments, a hi-fi system, and a cowboy boot on the floor (the other is still worn by the central figure on the bed, of whom we see only hairy legs and stained underpants). Shamotte completes the boudoir of a similarly cartoonish teen with head-shop posters, incense, cluttered desk and tattered bongos. Birth of Laughing Chinaman pushes the crowded surrealness even further, a gleeful Fu Manchu figure emerging from the womb amid a room crammed with Mexican folk art, an old film projector, 1960s furniture, voodoo sculptures and pot plants. While his art arises from internal impulses, the artist processes these through what he calls a ‘carnival of other images, objects that I have around’: this fusion of interior and exterior reflects an ambition ‘to create something dreamlike.’ Ultimately, these works’ meticulous depiction of private spaces manifests a fondness for the studio – a zone where, like his subjects, Tal R is free to be who he wants to be. ‘For me, any studio is a precious place. I like to compare it to the brain. If you think about it, your own brain, despite all its shortfalls, is the only paradise you have. In your brain you are free … You do things that you won't do in your real life, because you would have to bear the consequences. A studio is like a copy of the brain. It’s a place where you try out various things, where you have permission to fail.’