NEW YORK, NY.- 303 Gallery announced their second solo exhibition by Tala Madani titled Dirty Windows. Pairing new paintings with animation, Madani continues her transgressive examination of cultural norms, sociopolitical relationships, and power dynamics.
With Dirty Windows, Madani presents the latest iteration of her Cloud Paintings. Soft in texture and colossal in scale, the sky-filled canvases display the analogous formation of clouds as figures, words, and excrement. Initially making its debut as "Cloud Mommies", at her 2022-23 MOCA Los Angeles survey exhibition, Biscuits, her series of Cloud Paintings has evolved past the maternal figure, though traces of that female presence remain. Overtaken by feces, Dirty Windows draws the viewers' attention upwards, perhaps beyond, to ponder what we look up to and what we worship.
Central to the exhibition is the concept of windows. Using the sky as a background and the canvas' veneer as a foreground, the paintings become permanent structures for doodling. Like fingers playfully dragging across condensation on dirty glass, Madani projects her imagination into the ether as drawings of miniature stick figures, unidentifiable men, and buildings create scenes of narrative. Weather serves as a tertiary element between the dichotomy of what’s above and what’s in front. While weather can move clouds and fog up windows, in Madani’s pictures, it also transforms the figment of one’s psyche.
On view in the back room are Madani's Shit Mom animation, where a scatological female character wanders an interior leaving traces of feces everywhere she goes. Developed in a perfect accident while smudging her painting, the character of Shit Mom embodies motherhood while deconstructing the role female figures play in the art historical canon.
Tala Madani's work has been shown in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; MAMCO Geneva; Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, The New Museum, New York; Portikus, Frankfurt, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge; MoMA PS1, New York; and Secession, Vienna, and is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Guggenheim, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; MOCA Los Angeles, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. In 2022-23, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA exhibited Madani’s first North American survey. Madani's work will be in upcoming exhibitions at Henry Art Gallery, Seattle and Rialto6, Lisbon. Born in Tehran in 1981, Madani lives and works in Los Angeles.
