A few weeks ago I went to the National Gallery in Oslo with my visiting friends. We were about to go out he first room when, as I opened and closed the sketch drawer, a man approached me asking which one I liked best. “The one at the right” I said. When I looked up, a man in his sixties, long hair and purple hat and coat, multicolored tie and bow-tie smiled at me. After asking where we came from, he started naming mexican artists’ works that are part of his collection.
Now, this impressed me, as he obviously knew what he was talking about, and he was no random visitor with an eccentric sense of style. He named some Kahlos, Orozcos and Tamayos, and then told us he would show us his work. We met again at Nationalgalleriet’s bookshop, he picked a book and took us inside the café, where he ordered a glass of wine. Skeptical at first, I was surprised to see this man’s picture on the first page of the book. He was Petar Tale, contemporary artist.
Surreal feeling. Specially as we talked about art, movement, flow, traces. He talked about a piece of work he says was inspired by the city. He deconstructed it and expressed it in hundreds of lines. I couldn’t stop thinking about flow maps, as he talked about people, movement and his work. We had to go, and we said our goodbyes and I pulled up from wonderland in time to catch the tram.
Tale Art Museum and Foundation
