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Lot 45

 

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Through exposure and experimentation L.N. Tallur has developed a truly unique artistic vocabulary over the last decade. His works are complex and physically diverse, and each evokes multiple readings and interpretations. "Throughout his production run the durable threads of well-considered content but also an astonishing discernment in regards to formal attributes. So we, the viewers, must consider any number of possibilities when encountering... Through exposure and experimentation L.N. Tallur has developed a truly unique artistic vocabulary over the last decade. His works are complex and physically diverse, and each evokes multiple readings and interpretations. "Throughout his production run the durable threads of well-considered content but also an astonishing discernment in regards to formal attributes. So we, the viewers, must consider any number of possibilities when encountering his creations: history, theisms, concrete manifestations of the divine and ephemeral expressions of human desire, silhouettes, patinas, the transformation of forms through migratory paths or the inevitable decay of organic substances, even noise and tonnage as sculptural components, packaged with a particular legerdemain that has come to be the artist's nom de plume (to pit metaphors against one another, a Tallurian trait)" (Peter Nagy, "The Acumenical Pursuits of Mr. L.N. Tallur", the artist's website, accessed February 2013).

The time that the artist spent at the Maharaja Sayyajirao University of Baroda and Leeds Metropolitan University deepened his understanding and manipulation of material, encouraged his engagement with symbolic ambiguity, and also pushed him to broaden the conceptual and physical scale of his works - all of which are reflected in his practice today. Incorporating a dynamic mix of ideas relating to philosophy, politics, culture, tradition, spirituality, technology and the environment, the artist's works capture the absurdity of everyday life and the anxiousness that characterizes contemporary society.

On several occasions, Tallur has turned to the digestive system as an allegory for contemporary patterns of consumption and waste in his practice. This metaphor informs early inflatable installations like Ablution (2003), as well as later works like Digesting Times (2005), Bulimia (2005), Bon Appetite (2006) and Alzheimer's (2006). The present lot, a burnt wood figure of an elephant excreting silver, is titled after an ailment of the digestive tract where acid from the stomach leaks into the esophagus, leading to heartburn and other painful symptoms. Visually representing a possible consequence of excess and greed, the work could be a contemporary reminder of the fable about the goose that laid golden eggs.

Tallur, also a trained museuologist, perhaps intends the scorched and degraded figure of the elephant to be a symbol for the state of tradition or heritage today, and particularly the ways in which it is commoditised in contemporary society.

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