An artist exploring our phobias and fetishes

Talented artist Tallur L.N.’s new solo takes place at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York. Employing a wide range of materials like bronze, wood, silicone, concrete, terracotta, and silver, the works on view include sculpture, a site-specific installation and wall pieces.

Dr. Chaitanya Sambrani has elaborated how his work tends to reaffirm the death of future-driven progress. The future is already obsolete. Eternal and omnipresent speed propels us headlong into a chaotic intermingling of conditions where the vernacular and the international commingle in uneasy marriages, and where epiphanies are only to be found stumbled upon in the refuse heap amongst the endlessly accumulating pile of debris.”

Looking to challenge the futility of desire and the bondage of materiality, he traces dichotomies between the figurative and the abstract, the tangible and the ethereal, the decorative and the conceptual so as to unearth new meanings on contemporary existence. An accompanying note mentions: “Tallur is exploring the ways to become liberated through the repetitious movement of the body as it works the machinery in an endless cycle sans clear consequence.”

In ‘Chromataphobia’, a large recreation of the Laughing Buddha holding a wooden log, Tallur describes the title’s meaning as an abnormal and persistent fear of money and its diagnosis as a state in which rhythm is lost to a greed for growth and speed. This rhythm he speaks of can only return through the passage of time. Viewers are encouraged to hammer their own coins into the wood’s cracks and crevices. With every insertion the participants are to clear their minds of worry and negative thoughts and make a wish for themselves. The unfixed concept of value is explored throughout his practice.

In ‘Eraser Pro’, he tackles contemporary problems of information storage and loss using traditional techniques and lush material to bridge the past, present and future and point toward thematic interconnectedness through time. The bronze figure stands erect, holding a staff while sections of the body reveal erosion that has penetrated deep beyond the surface. Indicative of much of his practice, the artist bridges historical iconography with present conditions exploring our phobias and fetishes.