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Lot 36

 

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Conceptual artist L N Tallur employs a multitude of mediums, ranging from sculpture and interactive pieces to found objects and site-specific installations, to highlight the absurdities and anxieties of contemporary life. In the present lot, he depicts a religious brass lamp embedded within a broken RCC pillar, with steel construction rods emerging out of the top of the concrete structure. In its composition, the pillar appears to have been... Conceptual artist L N Tallur employs a multitude of mediums, ranging from sculpture and interactive pieces to found objects and site-specific installations, to highlight the absurdities and anxieties of contemporary life. In the present lot, he depicts a religious brass lamp embedded within a broken RCC pillar, with steel construction rods emerging out of the top of the concrete structure. In its composition, the pillar appears to have been cemented around the lamp, and its dug-up state suggests excavation. Typical of Tallur's style, the present lot contains symbols of India, both ceremonial and industrial, exploring the awkward convergence of tradition and progress.

The present lot was part of the artist's solo show Antimatter in New York in 2008. To accompany the exhibition display, the artist chose a quote by Albert Einstein presented in the style of a Sanskrit verse:

|| Matter and energy are really different forms of the same thing. ||
|| Matter can be turned into energy, and energy into matter. ||
|| This process involves the complete destruction of matter, and occurs only when that matter meets an equal amount of antimatter... a substance composed of matter with negative charge. ||

- Albert Einstein

According to Dr. Chaitanya Sambrani, the lamp, an artefact of the past, and its continued endurance within the literal "construction" of the present, is a nod to "the coexistence of multiple layers of history in contemporary India... a ceremonial lamp stubbornly burns on while being enveloped in a growing mass of cement... Will the lamp corrode the cement with its heat and soot to reclaim its position in the (old) order of things where lighting the lamp graces the beginning of all activities symbolizes beginnings, or will it be engulfed and snuffed out? Or is this old order under siege and about to be snuffed out by the irrepressible energies of "development"?" (Dr. Chaitanya Sambrani, "International Vernaculars and Throwaway Epiphanies: The Recent Work of Tallur L.N.," Placebo: L N Tallur, New York: Arario Gallery and Mumbai: Gallery Chemould, 2009, pp. 11-12)

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