Whitney Museum of American Art / October 21, 2010 – January 9, 2011

Paul Thek’s retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art felt thin, too curatorially spartan to reflect the variegation and vastness of the artist’s practice. Wanted stuff all over the place, all over the walls. An artist who lived on the margins and never fit in to the white cube. The most interesting parts were the archival photos and the frenetic handwriting in the sketchbooks. More deeply reflective of Paul Thek’s brilliant dilettantism than a few abstracted objects placed in their pristine settings.

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In 2002, L.N. Tallur created Made in England: A Temple Designed for India, a six-meter-tall, phallic-shaped inflatable shiva temple, which placed him in the league of India’s leading sculptors. With a long red slit down the front that forms the temple entrance—suggestive of female genitalia—and a red inflatable cow sitting on a black cushion facing the opening. Made in England takes a comic jab at the historical relationship between colonizer and the colonized. Tallur has developed this particular brand of wit in subverting India’s markers into his signature style.   

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