Conceptual artist Tallur L N, through his series of artworks in New York, explores the ways in which humans navigate the absurdities of a world rife with competing anxieties, desires and fears. By U Nair
Different media, including found objects, appropriated industrial machines, carved stone and wood, cast bronze, and works embedded in concrete and coated in oil, were used together for a range of more than 25 sculptures created during the past 13 years by conceptual artist, Tallur L N. The Grounds For Sculpture (GFS) is set to present his first survey exhibition in the United States.
Fringe
The exhibition includes the premiere of an important new work and the exhibition’s partial namesake, Fringe (2019), a towering 18’-tall site-specific installation coated in bone meal, bone char and crushed bone, which was inspired by historic Indian temple fragments. This is from the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. On view is also the debut of a video work, Interference (2019), inaugurating Tallur’s use of film as an artistic medium. This mesmerising slow-motion video captures smoke-like plumes of dust being beaten out of a historic rug from the collection of the Junagadh Museum in Gujarat and obscuring its intricate pattern.
Apocalypse
In one of the galleries, works are sited on industrial scaffolding, an intervention which upends typical museum displays. While visitors are invited to walk through and ascend the structure, it intentionally obstructs views and provides partial access, thereby forcing viewers to accept multiple perspectives on the sculptures and their meaning.
In another installation, titled Apocalypse (2010), viewers squeeze in through cage bars and are invited to deposit coins in an industrial polishing machine. Following Tallur’s careful instructions, the coins become “civilised” and are polished to the point of denuding their value.
Collective history
The artist’s practice explores the ways in which humans navigate the absurdities of a world rife with competing anxieties, desires, and fears. At a moment in our collective history when the society is often at odds with itself and the lines between reality and truth sometimes feel arbitrary, Tallur’s work amplifies and distorts what we hold as true or sacred and illuminates paradoxes and contradictions.
Building on the rich sculptural traditions of India, he references ancient iconography, Hindu symbols, and mythology. Tallur purposefully obscures, transforms and subverts the traditional reading of these historic references as he creates conceptual metaphors through the manipulation and integration/dis-integration of materials. His work acknowledges the complexity of the global world we live in and creates dynamic tension between the past and present while provoking questions about the future.
Milled History
In Milled History (2014), Tallur employed termites to feed on a wooden copy of a temple figurine, then digitally scanned the remains and milled them into sandstone that mimics the wood grain of its original state. The artist relates everyday acts of consumption and digestion to the gradual effacement and loss of culture, highlighting how objects can be displaced and imitated to suit preferred versions of history and politics.
Eraser Pro
The exhibition title alludes to the notion that we simultaneously carry forward and censor memories of the past and that this subjective retelling becomes history. Tallur likens this process of collective memory and amnesia to two strong waves. In physics, ‘interference’ is a phenomenon where two waves come together. If their frequency and wavelength are in sync, they can amplify, diminish, or completely negate each other.
His finest work is Eraser Pro 2012, a sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi that has been created as a dulcet fragmentation incomplete in its insignia and dynamic in design dictates. Tallur loves to keep his viewers guessing. He uses sculpture, wall pieces, interactive work and site-specific installations to expose the absurdities of everyday life and the anxieties that characterise contemporary society. His work incorporates hand-made craftsmanship, found objects, organic and industrial material; symbols of developing India, often times creating a correlation between traditional and contemporary customs. The New York Times eloquently described the artist’s work, “Each of his pieces is like a miniature curiosity cabinet, hand-assembled down to the smallest detail and packed with charmed and puzzling surprises.”
(The show begins from May 1.)
