Tala Madani opens Control X in Los Angeles
Bald, naked middle-aged men are back on the walls in Los Angeles.
Painter and animator Tala Madani has opened a new show, Control X, at David Kordansky in Los Angeles, Artnet News reported on 23 September 2026. The gallery lists it as an exhibition of new paintings and video animations at its space at 5130 W. Edgewood Pl. David Kordansky
The display centres on recent work made for Los Angeles. That includes Hard Route, a painting dated 2026, and Alphabet City, a new animation. It also continues her Shit Moms painting series, which she began in 2019.
The show includes a family first. Madani is married to artist Nathaniel Mellors, and Control X features their first collaboration. Mellors composed the music for Alphabet City.
Madani was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1981. Her family emigrated to Oregon, where she later studied painting at Oregon State University before postgraduate study at Yale in the United States. She has lived and worked in Los Angeles for 15 years.
Her work often depicts mostly naked, bald, middle-aged men. The figures appear in domestic and strange situations in both paint and moving image. Madani works across painting and animation.
For anyone new to her work, this show follows a major museum moment. In 2022 she had a mid-career survey, a museum exhibition reviewing her work to date, at the MOCA Geffen in Los Angeles. Control X is her return to the commercial gallery where she has shown regularly since her first Los Angeles solo there in 2015.
