Important Notice

Tallur L N’s figurative sculptures draw from many Subcontinental sculptural traditions like Jain sculptures featuring the tirthankaras, Buddhist art classical bronzes of the Chola and Vijayanagara empires and animist sculptures made out of wood by Indian tribes and the garish reproductions favoured by the petit bourgeois. His works have a distinct tangibility that artist and gallerist Peter Nagy notes is reminiscent of the grand 19th... Tallur L N’s figurative sculptures draw from many Subcontinental sculptural traditions like Jain sculptures featuring the tirthankaras, Buddhist art classical bronzes of the Chola and Vijayanagara empires and animist sculptures made out of wood by Indian tribes and the garish reproductions favoured by the petit bourgeois. His works have a distinct tangibility that artist and gallerist Peter Nagy notes is reminiscent of the grand 19th century European sculptures.

The artist is very invested in the materiality of his work and makes considered decisions when it comes to the material with which to create a particular piece. Although he spent a long time observing the practices of student artists while studying museology, he asserts that a real familiarity with material can only be achieved through your own practice. “We have a different kind of association to material when viewing and experiencing it. Material should say something, you know you have to feel for the material. So it does not come from knowledge. It comes from experience.” (Artist in “In Focus: L N Tallur”, India Art Fair, 15 May 2020, online) Peter Nagy says of Tallur L N’s immense skill in wielding his material, “One is initially seduced by Mr. Tallur’s luxurious involvement with material stuffs. Wood is burnished, scorched and oiled to produce brooding hulks and gleaming strides; bronzes glisten with humidity; an animal fecundity is coaxed from concrete. Acquiring a skin of lichen or putrid blooms; metals are polluted with corroding salves while the pitch of petroleum is used as theatrical makeup. We are in the salon of a couturier or an alchemist’s lab, with multiple materials usually combined into a single work for an operatic effect.” (Peter Nagy, The Acumenical Pursuits of Mr. L.N. Tallur”, 2010 accessed via Critical Collective, online)

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