Alwar Balasubramaniam

“Balasubramaniam has long investigated thresholds between presence and absence and the physical and the spiritual, particularly in relationship to himself. By the early 2000s, the artist (also known as Bala) expanded this exploration of the self by making sculptures after casts of his own body, distancing the works from their original referent through the use of a variety of materials and processes. Here, he recast a plaster form of his own physique in malleable rubber that he then further distorted by bending and torqueing. Subsequent castings and manipulations resulted in this machine-carved and hand-finished stone version, which appears to wither or melt away—a shell of its former self.”

-Shanay Jhaveri, The Metropolitan Museum of Art