Adidas Boy

The imagery of the woodcut suite Adidas Boy is based on a group of bronze and plaster sculptures Tal R created for his 2020 solo exhibition at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. The concept of revisiting his own imagery for a printmaking project is a familiar working method for Tal R. In connection to his sculptures however, this approach seems especially appropriate: the physical act of carving a woodblock and working with the material’s resistance shares many similarities with the creation of a sculpture. For Adidas Boy, Tal R depicts figures from his milieu, sketched in white lines against monochrome backgrounds, which accentuate the wood grain of the blocks he had been working on. During the test printing process with master printer Julie Dam, he decided not to use pure black ink, but to add a small amount of colour pigment to the individual prints resulting in subtle colour variations. This effect becomes most evident when the suite of prints is installed as a sequence.