Victoria Miro Mayfair is delighted to present Walk towards Hare Hill, a cycle of distinctive plein air paintings by Tal R.

Walk towards Hare Hill comprises thirty-seven works created near the artist’s summerhouse in northern Denmark, over a couple of months in late summer 2013. More than just the latest series in the Copenhagenbased artist’s oeuvre, Walk towards Hare Hill is also an act, a personal narrative and a reflection upon the medium.

Early each morning Tal R set off either on foot or by bicycle, with oils and a canvas, piece of board or sheet of paper – whichever was to hand – to create a new work in the nearby forest, returning each day to three different spots where he liked to sit. These small paintings - few are larger than 60 x 50 centimetres, and most are less than half that size - repeat the same motifs: a fallen tree, a fork in the road. This exercise offered an immediacy of representation, and prompted Tal R to reflect upon the significance of making work in this way, asking whether painting en plein air is now just a romantic notion, or whether this mode of working can be a productive contemporary activity for an artist, in which the real and the imagined intersect spontaneously. The interest, for Tal R, is that even in this situation, you “cannot copy what you see, you must always invent it somehow, find ways of capturing it.”

Hare Hill, a place of extraordinary beauty, is somewhere Tal R never painted. He painted nearby and around but was not aware of Hare Hill - described as the ‘perfect place to paint’ - until a friend took him there on the final day of the summer vacation, when the artist was about to return to the city. Walk towards Hare Hill, then, is a metaphor for a process, for a journey with an unseen destination, a striving for something remarkable which is as yet unknown.

The Danish artist Tal R is celebrated for his expressive and exuberant paintings and sculptures, elaborate installations and innovative approach to materials. Born in Tel Aviv in 1967, Tal R lives and works in Copenhagen. A major survey exhibition The Virgin is currently on view at ARoS Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark. Tal R has also had solo exhibitions in recent years at Städtische Galerie, Wolfsburg (2013), Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2013), Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2012), Museu Brasileiro da Escultura, São Paulo (2012), Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck (2012), Kunstverein Hamburg (2011), Magasin 3, Stockholm (2009), Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht (2008), Camden Arts Centre, London (2008), Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst, Denmark (2007). He currently holds a Guest Professorship at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.