Corner Projection with Prism Refraction and Buckets (2018), Tala Madani.
Tala Madani’s recent show at 303 Gallery gave me the occasion to reflect on her work and its development. What struck me most in this recent show is how much the spirit of her paintings seemed connected to Francis Bacon.
Study From the Human Body (1986), Francis Bacon.
When looking at a Francis Bacon painting such as Study From the Human Body (1986), we do not linger on pithy brushwork or unpack planar fragments, as we might with Matisse or Picasso. Instead, everywhere we find a loaded significance that forces inquiry. The human body is present, but what do we make of its impossibly muscular thigh? On this pristine yellow surface, every mark feels outsized with purpose. Further looking suggests the thigh is a visual rhyme, a formal reflection of the strewn newspapers curving up along the ground. This rhyme of forms is doubled when we notice that the sliver of pale ground is itself reflected (and transformed backwards) in the linear wireframe above. We appreciate these formal elements in Bacon, but they are organized as a designer would organize them, in an economy, toward an effect. Each moment not an end in itself, but a means to communicate an authority of significance. These effective significances are so harsh in their transition that they disrupt any sense of an aesthetic whole. Instead, the total impression is that of a riddle, something that demands not interpretation, but recognition, even if it cannot finally be given over to understanding.
In Francis Bacon we want a directness of execution because his image is so obscure, inapparent and complex. As a viewer, we are perpetually caught up in the process of reconciling the elements, not only visually, but toward an almost textural specificity. The more Bacon can exercise his design skill, the more clarity he exhibits as a vehicle for his obscurity, the more provocative the riddle of his paintings become.
Pink Cake (2008), Tala Madani.
Tala Madani’s work, on the other hand, is characterized by an almost slapstick offhandedness despite an equal focus on the image and its effect. She, too, has a fascination for naked men writhing about, but hers engage much closer to the level of parody. The endgame of painting as the image of a joke, rather than the wireframe riddles of Bacon.
Jet of Water (1979), Francis Bacon.
OvenBurst II (2018), Tala Madani.
This distinction between jokes and riddles can be seen everywhere when placing the painters next to each other. The riddle takes elements – things such as figures, toilet bowls or mirrors, and disfigures them through a logic outside of common sense. But, more than this, it is shot through with enough emphasis and direction that it taunts a viewer with its specificity of significance. This distinguishes the riddle as a form from a large portion of canon surrealism that often asks us only to revel in its disorders.
Unlike a linguistic riddle, there is no final resolution. A painting only ever asks us to look, however the form of the riddle remains in effect as an engine to generates appearances. Nothing sums up this arrangement better than Bacon’s little arrows. They scream, not just to be seen, but to signify. They declare, but do not clarify. Bacon’s arrows act as an aesthetic synecdoche to his whole practice, so much so that they can occasionally grate, feeling like a too generous reveal of the heart.
Sand Dune (1983), Francis Bacon.
The cleaner (2016), Tala Madani
Jokes on the other hand do not present a secret to be uncovered. They exhaust themselves on the surface. Jokes almost demand a laxity in execution, because the delivery of a joke is like a ladder to be kicked out upon its reception. A sloppy execution tells us not to focus too much on the painted object, just enough to grasp what the thing is, and to move on to the punchline.
That a joke is funny ought to be self-evident, even a reflex. Just so, Tala Madani’s paintings most often count as jokes for the same reason they count as paintings – by and through their reflexive relation to their medium. Shit, Ice cream, and Light are all effortless metaphors for paint, at least as much so as paint is a metaphor for them. Madani is funny when she forces a relation between goofy subjects and their calculated realization as paint – often in the key of high minded abstraction (see for instance, OvenBust II (2018), above). Its a conscious disparity, a knowing bathos that requires a bit of art history to land. All jokes are based on a modicum of shared knowledge, here as elsewhere.
While the distinction between joke and riddle stands out, the reason for aligning the two strategies is that they belong to the same family. By focusing on an image with a charged and provocative legibility, they use paint effectively, and so chart territory outside of what pure form might want from painting. They operate in awareness that painting is never just something that we see or even that we perceive, but that it is something that speaks, whether we can hear it or not.
The current 303 show initially brought Bacon to mind because of an austerity in Madani’s new paintings. Never have they felt so groundless in their generation of effects. Her paint handling is more abbreviated than ever. But what most emphatically signals Bacon’s relevance to the recent work is that Madani’s bag of tricks has become self-referential to her own practice as it has developed thus far. Corner Projection with Prism Refraction and Buckets (2018) is still funny in a way, but not in the same way that The cleaner (2016) is. It is declarative for sure, but in compounding its loose symbology, it enters, sphynx-like, into a position closed to common reflection. Maybe this is because it is too complex, too loaded. There are too many elements quilted into its fabric for it to fully resolve into a joke about painting, or even a joke about masculinity as they are often linked hand in hand. In any case, it is as close to the riddle as Madani’s comedy has ever come.
Corner Projection with Prism Refraction and Buckets (2018), Tala Madani.
Citadel of Angst 