‘I’m interested in a kind of figuration that’s not about precision but about trying to catch the ideas of your brain.’ - Tala Madani

Executed in 2010, Tala Madani’s Imprint II subsumes us into the artist’s surreal painterly world. Created in the year preceding her seminal show at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam, in the present work the viewer encounters the feet of four figures lying down, half hidden by a white covering daubed with illegible text-like black shapes, the first forming the letter ‘T’. With colourful stripes spanning the length of the composition, the figures’ socks mirror the colourful background artist of yellow, red, purple and turquoise, imbuing the work with vitality and vibrancy. Provoking a humorous response with her uncanny imagery, Madani toys with infantilizing her protagonists, playing with our associations with comedy, societal norms and shame. The importance of her progressive oeuvre has been further cemented in the recently acclaimed exhibition, Radical Figures: Painting in the New Millennium hosted at Whitechapel Gallery, London.

Through her figurative application of oil, Madani renders her figures in the style of a caricature, often suggesting a background narrative or story. Incorporating visual references from cinema and pop culture, her style is made visceral in through the impact of political cartoons and historical cartoonists such as William Hogarth and Honoré Daumier. Madani’s treatment of violence, shame and sexuality continues a painterly dialogue with the psychological canvasses of Philip Guston and the lewd sexual content of Paul McCarthy’s sculpture and photography. Participating alongside leading contemporary artists at the Whitney Biennal in 2017, Madani’s body of work creates a unique visual space where desires are unfettered, and restrictions are relinquished.