COURTESY THE ARTIST AND 303 GALLERY
303 Gallery in New York now represents Tala Madani, the Los Angeles–based painter whose provocative paintings and video work recently made an appearance at the Whitney Biennial. Her work was previously shown in New York by Jane Lombard Gallery.
Madani’s work typically deals with hidden desires that, in her imaginary landscapes, are allowed to go unrestrained. Her characters, which are almost always men, sometimes masturbate and pee together, and some figures appear to project Madonnas and smiley faces. In a recent ARTnews profile, Madani described her work as “serious stuff that’s been processed through humor.”
Until this year, Madani’s work had largely been shown only in Los Angeles, where she is represented by David Kordansky Gallery, and in Europe—she is represented by Pilar Corrias Gallery in London. In February, a Madani video appeared at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in a small collection rehang dedicated to artists who hail from banned Muslim countries, and then, in March, a new series of paintings and a video debuted at the Whitney Biennial.