Living Projection, 2017

Author: Tala Madani

Middle-aged bald men involved in absurd scenes that merge playing with violence and perversity. Although the figures are stereotypes, they take part in strange and ludicrous activities. Through her distinctive painting technique, Madani imbues recurring symbols and images with a complexity that cannot be boiled down to a sole reading. Curiosities, fantasy and desire pieces, Madani’s paintings trigger a cacophony of interpretation that surpasses mere commentary. As such, they exist as “experimentation vignettes” with formidable and weighty meditations on the stereotypical and the iconic.

The men in her paintings are sometimes derided and mocked, they are clowns overcome by a Brechtian space. The loosely executed brush strokes and flat pictorial spacing endow her paintings almost with a cartoon-like quality.