Artist LN Tallur builds connections between the past and the present and urges viewers to question the obvious | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Artist LN Tallur builds connections between the past and the present and urges viewers to question the obvious | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Written by Vandana Kalra |Updated: July 15, 2019 8:19:18 am

Artist LN Tallur builds connections between the past and the present and urges viewers to question the obvious

Comprising 27 works from 13 years, the showcase has Tallur experimenting with the medium of bone meal and film for the first time, but there are common strands that connect with several of his previous works — his engagement with the past and how it affects the present.

Arguably his biggest show in the US, the other part of the title comes from a slow motion video, titled Interference, that shows dust being beaten out of an 18th century rug, woven by jail inmates, at the Junagadh museum in Gujarat.

TOWERING 18 feet tall and made with bone meal, bone char and crushed bone, LN Tallur’s Fringe has a spiral contortion of skulls jutting out of a mountainous structure. Occupying a large space at the Grounds For Sculpture — a sculpture park and museum in Hamilton — Tallur says the artwork is a dialogue between the present and the past. The work, he says, is based on fragments of a historic Indian temple in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The artist carefully scanned the fragments and the digital files formed the premise of his own work. “It’s a 10th century sculpture, probably made in Madhya Pradesh. The two figures are starved and the body skeleton is visible. While one figure is masturbating, the other is busy eating the foot of the masturbating figure. It’s actually hard to interpret the work and the museum text displayed alongside has changed four times. I see my work as a dialogue with the sculptor, who would have had to adhere to several rules back then,” says Tallur, 48.