Banana Beach

‘Every work I create confronts me with two challenges: a narrative and a formal challenge’, Tal R explains with regard to his two woodcuts Banana Beach and Night at Hotel Oper. The narrative is informed by his general interest in the depiction of interior spaces, specifically hotel rooms. ‘The formal challenge’, he explains, ‘was the depiction of two distinct realms, the inside and the outside, and their simultaneous connection and separation.’

Both images depict hotel rooms Tal R himself stayed in: Hotel Oper in Düsseldorf, Germany, where he held a professorship in painting, with a tower visible from the window. The other hotel is located in Tel Aviv, with a direct view of the beach that gives the woodcut its title, and a minaret.
What the two woodcuts have in common, apart from these similarities in motif, perspective and format, is Tal R’s reduced yet atmospheric use of colour. His pallet for Night at Hotel Oper characterizes the space as plush and old-timey, somewhat neglected, perhaps reminiscent of an old brothel. Banana Beach, on the other hand, evokes the early morning light, which has not yet reached into the dark hotel room, with the illuminated minaret against the slowly brightening morning sky.