Tallur's Terracotta: JKK

Tensile terracotta greets your gaze at Jaipur's Jawahar Kala Kendra which houses India's first Ceramic Triennale Breaking Ground. Internationally renown L N Tallur's Man Exhibiting Holes has been assembled using hollowed-out terracotta and cement. Tallur marries space and terracotta pieces to create a distinct sculpture placed on a pedestal.

Tallur's work reaffirms the place of man in the path of progress. The reason he stands apart in conception and ingenuity is his ability to challenge the infinite quantum of materiality and his felicity with the design. The head of a man with its evocative expression tells us that as an artist and a sculptor, Tallur reaches deep into dichotomies between what is tangible and what is tactile. He measures and balances the figurative and the abstract, to create new corollaries in the conceptual to bring forth new meanings on contemporary existence.

Tallur often quotes Albert Einstein to illustrate his aesthetics. "Matter and energy are really different forms of the same thing. Matter can be turned into energy, and energy into matter.

This process involves the complete destruction of matter and occurs only when that matter meets an equal amount of antimatter ... a substance composed of matter with a negative charge."

Man Exhibiting Holes is about multiple possibilities -it fuses history, concrete manifestations of the real and ephemeral, and expressions of the human predicament. The terracotta plates neatly arranged and cemented speak to us about the transformation of thought, as well as the inevitable decay of organic substances, and Tallur's ability speak the language of metaphors a Tellurian trait. Throughout his production run the durable threads of well-considered content but also an astonishing discernment in regards to formal attributes.

The ingenuity in Tallur's work is the way he uses materials to bridge the past, present, and future and point toward thematic interconnectedness through time through lucid design elements.

Tallur's art speaks the language of installation like a natural lyric. Over the years he has built his creative instincts on the foundation of ' an eclectic approach which includes the traditional techniques of modelling, carving, and casting but also the more radical gestures of assemblage and appropriation.' Curator Peter Nagy has noted that it is Tallur 's polyvalent facility which enables him to explore both ancient and contemporary dilemmas simultaneously, an astonishing feat in actuality.

At the JKK Tallur's work tells us that an artist has to keep reinventing his language so that he maintains his place in the map of contemporary practices. And this reaffirms the importance of thought and imagination in the mind of the artist.