Provenance: Paradis, Nansensgade, Copenhagen (label on the reverse Tal/M 551). Provenance: Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin label on the reverse Tal/M 551/00). Provenance: Private collection, Denmark.

In 2013, Tal R created a series of works inspired by Copenhagen under moonlight. The motifs are drawn from places in the city of special significance to the artist, particularly the area around “Sortedam Dosseringen”, where he has lived and worked for many years. The works capture fleeting moments — instances that sometimes exist for only a brief second.

In Milkman, a gathering of figures is seen assembled on Dronning Louise’s Bridge, overlooking the evocative, French-inspired architecture of Søtorvet from the late 19th century. At the center of the image sits a colourful, contemplative figure on the bridge’s railing, while a passerby is faintly discernible at the edge of the scene. Around the central figure, other, more anonymous figures are sketched in black and silhouette.

Tal R has described the series as an exploration of a “double gaze” upon the city — the living present, but also the remnants of everything that has taken place before, now existing only as traces or “ghosts from other eras.” In Milkman, this atmosphere of temporal duality — of loss, yet also presence and continuity — is strongly felt. Our everyday lives are part of something larger.

“In every city, it’s always the living and the dead who walk around. The living you can, of course, see, but you also sense the dead. Suddenly you turn down a street, and there’s a certain angle that someone has forgotten, that belongs to an era that’s over — and for some reason, nobody cleaned it away. Luckily.” (Tal R, quoted from the film The Moon over Copenhagen Sees a Lot, Louisiana Channel, April 2013)