first became preoccupied with the aesthetics of the storefront four or five years ago, when he walked past an art shop displaying a vacant frame in the window: “It is a bit of a cheesy metaphor, the idea of the empty frame, but it reminded me of a pop song,” he says, as he prepares for a new exhibition of his paintings at Victoria Miro.
Since this encounter Tal has used source material comprising over a thousand photographs from his own travels and those supplied by friends, in order to recreate these unusual windows in beautiful, vibrant colour. On first glance these erotic emporiums could be any other beautiful building, complete with coded kaleidoscopic displays – but the presence of names such as ‘Dirty Dick’ and ‘Venus’ hanging above the doorway gives the game away.