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Tal Slutzker, barely 25 years old, has decided to stage the first full-fledged, high-profile solo exhibition of his paintings. Some would ask, "Why so soon, when the artist is still so young?" Others, however, who are familiar with this young man and aware of his resume as an artist, are demanding to know what has taken him so long.
You see, Tal Slutzker has a history. Painting since he was eight, studying privately with artist Zachar Sherman at age nine, Slutzker was already being hailed as a child prodigy by the time he was 10. At 12 he felt confident enough about his artistic skills to send a photograph of one of his paintings to then-president of the United States Bill Clinton, who sent a warm letter back, wishing him further success as an artist.
"I sent him a photograph of a painting I made in honor of NASA. Some vehicle reached Mars and inspired me to do this painting. It was a two-meter canvas. I worked on it for quite a while. I just sent him a photograph of the painting with a little letter, and got a letter back," he says.
A 2000 feature article by Gil Goldfine in The Jerusalem Post began, simply, with the word "remarkable." Participation in a few group exhibitions followed, as well as one or two solo shows in minor venues. A now notorious "one-painting exhibition" in the window of the Tova Osman Gallery in Tel Aviv, showing the enormous derriere of a nude woman in a bathtub, stopped both pedestrian and vehicular traffic in front of the gallery on Ben-Yehuda Street.
And then, around 2006, Slutzker simply fell off the radar and disappeared from the local art scene. The young prodigy, after a few heady years of acclaim, decided to quietly hone his skills and develop as an artist. Little or nothing was seen by him or heard about him for the next five years or so.
Until now.
We visit Slutzker at the home of his parents in Herzliya a week before the opening of his exhibition, called "Where is My Mind," at the Bernard Gallery in Tel Aviv. Slutzker lives and works in Tel Aviv but prefers to keep his paintings in his parents' apartment,...