Tempra

After the burning of the Library of Baghdad, the Tigris is said to have run blue. One imprisoned shah was fed nothing but gold. The greedy assassin Inalchuq was executed with molten silver poured into his eyes.

Bekhbaatar Enkhtur (Ulaanbaatar, 1994) works with sculpture and the media that orbit around it. His practice blends traditional symbolic repertoires with unexpected gestures, shaped through direct, physical contact with matter. He draws, models, casts. He melts ancient forms into new materials and vessels. At the heart of his work lies a fascination with thresholds—and with what crosses them. No
one can say whether stories like Inalchuq’s are true, or whether they were invented to carry something more essential. The relationship with the unknown that emerges in this suspended state becomes a form of wealth, more lasting than any precious metal. This is where sculpture takes place: as a passage between temperatures, states of being.

And if the world still has something to reveal to us,
it will be true only for those who have the courage,
the despair and the joy
to surrender to its majestic indifference,
to its roughness,
to its intoxicating and suffocating altitude.
(Emanuele Trevi, Viaggi iniziatici, Einaudi, 2021)