Ramakrishna Behera: New Paintings

L.N. Tallur: New Stone Sculptures

Nature Morte is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by a painter and a sculpture, both of whom have developed a focused practice in both materials and content.

The paintings of Ramakrishna Behera are most certainly landscapes and are inspired by real places: the mountains and monasteries of Ladakh, the countryside of Orissa, the temples of Angkor Wat, or the deep blue sea of the South Pacific. Yet the works employ distorted perspectives and fold in images of outer space to become something much more complex than simple landscapes. Trained as a Chemical Engineer and self-taught as a painter, Behera brings a scientist’s mind to the act of picture-making, resulting in philosophical puzzles which refer to Quantum Physics, Surrealism, Phenomenology, Psychedelia, and Cosmology.

The carved stone sculptures of LN Tallur turn history, and our perception of it, on its head. The artist starts with faux-antique pieces carved in wood which are then buried underground for many months, enabling the processes of decay and the aggressions of insects to further “carve” away at the forms. The rescued “relics” are then scanned by a computer and carved by lasers from blocks of stone the artist chooses specifically because they resemble wood. The results to be found in the gallery are triple-entendres, preserved specimens of bastardized surrogates.

Ramakrishna Behera was born in Orissa in 1977 and lives and works in Faridabad, a suburb of New Delhi. He is a self-taught painter and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemical Engineering from IIT Roorkee. He has participated in group exhibitions in Bhubaneswar, Kolkata and New Delhi and solo exhibitions of his work have been held at AIFACS, New Delhi (2007), Seven Art Ltd, New Delhi and Bose Pacia Kolkata (both 2009), Bose Pacia New York (2010), and Nature Morte at the Oberoi Gurgaon (2012).

L.N. Tallur was born in 1971 in the south Indian state of Karnataka. He received a BFA degree in Painting from the Chamarajendra Academy of Visual Arts in Mysore in 1996, an MFA degree in Museology from the MS University in Baroda in 1998, and an MA in Fine Art from the Metropolitan University in Leeds, UK in 2002. Solo shows of his works have been mounted at the Jack Shainman Gallery, New York (2013); Nature Morte, Berlin (2012), Nature Morte, New Delhi (2011, 2014); Arario Gallery, Beijing (2010); Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai (2009); Arario Gallery, New York (2008); Arario Gallery, Seoul (2007, 2015); Bose Pacia, New York (2000); and Chemould Gallery, Mumbai (1999). He is the recipient of the Sanskriti Award for Art from the Sanskriti Foundation of New Delhi in 2003 and the SkodaPrize Award in 2012, this for his solo exhibition entitled “Quintessential” at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai in 2011. His works were included in the 7th Asia Pacific Triennale at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia in 2012. The artist divides his time between India and South Korea.