Girl Smoking

Tal R’s Girl smoking etchings are part of a larger body of works, for which he portrayed women against lavish, detailed interiors. Over a period of three years, while teaching at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, Tal R invited acquaintances as well as strangers from the street to pose nude for him. The awkwardness of these encounters is encapsulated in the works, creating a palpable tension between subject, artist and environment. Girl smoking illustrates Tal R’s intimate relationship with the medium of printmaking: instead of making sketches on paper first, he worked the motives directly onto the copper plates which would later be used in the printmaking studio. The plates – and the prints resulting from them – achieve the status of witnesses to the artistic process.