Smoke Out: Tallur LN

“When the water reaches the upper level, we follow the rats”
Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months two rats could have over a million descendants. Philosophically, the rat is a connotation of the human mind. Our mind is always full of desires and is often selfish, just like a rat. Our thoughts have great power, both positive as well as negative. If not controlled at the right time, both of them could be highly destructive.
They need to get smoked out. Just as a rat that needs to be smoked out.
I have made some fumigated - disinfected - purified objects using fumes of certain chemicals normally used in museums. This quest explores our thoughts through this show: ‘Smoke Out’.

— L. N. Tallur

Material, Form and Meaning

The instruments and methods of communication are as much the subject of Tallur’s work as its symbolic content.
They provide a fascinating insight into the processes and materials with which objects are made now, and how they rely on the accumulated knowledge of how they have been made through history.
The venue where these works do their job, museums—where they eventually land up and reach out to the public—have their own processes and methods by which the objects are made to live on. Tallur is equally interested in those.

An intimate knowledge of material is not something that is the requirement of an artist alone, but also that of the museum conservator. For a sculptor who also trained in museology, his works equally observe how each thing has its process of decay written into it. The process of creation has its aesthetics as do rot and disappearance. Tallur invites us to observe and participate in this with poetic felicity.

The artistic communication of this naturally forces one to think of symbolism, metaphor, iconography and language. Hefty matters, deeply understood but communicated with tremendous wit. And here is where Tallur takes us on journeys that tie tradition with the contemporary that often provoke questions about the future.

— Naman P. Ahuja

“The Medium is the Message”

Which wisdom of tradition?
‘Intolerance’—same old medium / message —but you are still none the wiser makan.

All wrong! For years she gives you one red cross for your fooling play:

Tooling clay—hard fired now, unfired and soft earlier. Carving wood—teak or mango. Forging bronze— Solid or hollow. Memories of Stone—marble or granite

Industrial paint and carborundum. Hello concrete and, and yes, Hello to you too mirror, money, space and lac.

Welcome, welcome, all of you
Watch as the contemporary can now mill you all robotically in copycat processes

Greedy tourists—still fascinated by the fabric of what they see all around them.

Mix and match, own it all, come ‘Tongue Twister’, revel in every language you encounter. Desperate for meaning, exaggerate every mundane present

But Tallur’s been on a roll, enjoying what he does, living his every present.
You want a piece of the ‘Joyride’ too, don’t you?

Spinnin’, arrested in the ‘Supply Chain’, wise inheritor of a ‘Banana Republic’
Vitually burdenening mandalas, for what ‘?’

Grinding to feed the belly of some Antilla?

— Naman P. Ahuja

December 2017