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Lot 35

 

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One of the themes that animated Jitish Kallat’s early work was “…a mythology of the life cycle, an account of birth, maturity, death and regeneration that connects archetypal and public realities with elements of deeply personal history” (Ranjit Hoskote, “Entering the Maze: Recent Paintings by Jitish Kallat”, Ibid., Gallery Chemould exhibition catalogue, 2000-01, not paginated).

Against the hyper-urban background of Mumbai, a... One of the themes that animated Jitish Kallat’s early work was “…a mythology of the life cycle, an account of birth, maturity, death and regeneration that connects archetypal and public realities with elements of deeply personal history” (Ranjit Hoskote, “Entering the Maze: Recent Paintings by Jitish Kallat”, Ibid., Gallery Chemould exhibition catalogue, 2000-01, not paginated).

Against the hyper-urban background of Mumbai, a mega-city with its own cycles of decay and regeneration, Kallat expresses the vulnerability of its residents, who not only have to cope with their own mortality, but also with the fact that they must wage an ongoing battle to avoid becoming casualties of the metropolis. In the present lot, the artist approaches this theme through a pixelated image of a young boy standing against a bearded older man, perhaps a relative. While this sepia-toned pair is symbolic of the inevitable passage of time and the delicate balancing act it sustains, the line drawing of a human heart and one of its circulatory systems that Kallat has laid over it impresses on the viewer the physical and emotional fragility of the urban citizen. At the same time, however, the image of the child in Kallat’s work from this period is meant to be an uplifting one, representing “…an archetypal symbol of hope, an explorer who comes anew to the experience of the world” (Ibid.).

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