Important Notice

Lot 59

 

Quick Zoom

Jitish Kallat’s early works, most frequently canvases of epic proportions, are scattered with a wide variety of urban references, both textual and pictorial. The gritty underbelly of Mumbai, the city in which Kallat grew up and continues to live and work, along with his own image and elements of his autobiography, provides the backdrop against which many of these billboard-like works are staged. Graduating from the Sir J.J. School of Art in... Jitish Kallat’s early works, most frequently canvases of epic proportions, are scattered with a wide variety of urban references, both textual and pictorial. The gritty underbelly of Mumbai, the city in which Kallat grew up and continues to live and work, along with his own image and elements of his autobiography, provides the backdrop against which many of these billboard-like works are staged. Graduating from the Sir J.J. School of Art in 1996, the artist “…started out as a painter of himself and, occasionally, of family members, enlisting the aid of the camera, scanner, photocopier and computer as distancing devices in his unsentimental exploration of identity, culture and ancestry” (Girish Shahane, “On the Road”, Jitish Kallat: Unclaimed Baggage, Albion exhibition catalogue, London, 2007, p. 20, 21).

The present lot, exhibited in 1998 at ‘Apostrophe’, Kallat’s second solo show, intrigues the viewer with its prominently copyrighted title and the enigmatic inscription that follows: “Another Expedition Picture (from my Diary of Polite Departures).” The foreground is almost entirely occupied by a looming image of Kallat, imagined as some sort of seer or oracle with a white lotus sprouting from between his lips. On closer inspection, however, the viewer finds that the margins of the canvas are littered with photographic references to children and the innocence of youth. Armed with nothing more than curiosity, these young explorers, mounted on their trusty bicycle-steeds, are unfortunately a thing of the past in Mumbai, now a dangerously congested city where they cannot roam unattended. Partly nostalgic, partly cautionary, this canvas documents the simultaneous growth and decay of the heaving megalopolis.

“…Jitish Kallat’s crowded textures and mobbed narratives testify to an ever-evolving, saturated urban experience”. The artist’s body of work “…collectively narrates an unfiltered, roughly-hewn dialectic between individual and universal experiences in Mumbai, where he lives and works…Drawing on elements of autobiography especially in initial exhibitions like “Apostrophe” in New Delhi, 1998, Kallat transformed self-portraiture and distorted pre-existing, recognizable photocopy and newsprint images into large-scale paintings in step with commercial media and the fast, abrasive physicality of changing Mumbai” (Beth Citron, “Jitish Kallat”, Chemould Prescott Road website, accessed February, 2009).

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site