Important Notice

A dedicated documenter of the city of Mumbai and its metropolitan ways of life, Jitish Kallat’s canvases reveal the nuances of urban existence in a megalopolis that is allied to both the past and the future through a cipher of images, text and subtle references.

In the present lot, Kallat uses a lurid palette dominated by vermillion to portray a street-child, and, in doing so, to wittily bring to the viewer’s attention the precarious... A dedicated documenter of the city of Mumbai and its metropolitan ways of life, Jitish Kallat’s canvases reveal the nuances of urban existence in a megalopolis that is allied to both the past and the future through a cipher of images, text and subtle references.

In the present lot, Kallat uses a lurid palette dominated by vermillion to portray a street-child, and, in doing so, to wittily bring to the viewer’s attention the precarious existence of the city’s large population of orphans, homeless children and child labourers. While the artist captures the innocence of a monstrous sneeze in the central mirrored image, he also portrays in the background images of rubber mallets and of a child holding together the ends of a frayed cord, to symbolize the violence and inhumane labour that obliterate the innocence in these children’s lives.

Closely related to his work from the Covering Letter and Humiliation Tax series of paintings from 2004-05, this canvas also reveals Kallat’s fascination with the vivid colours of Pop Art and stark imagery of agitprop posters. In his works from this period, “…Kallat has re-wired his aesthetic in distinctive ways, moving towards a treatment of surface, image and reference that is more informal, that travels lighter, and that is coded with and updated set of references…these new works attest to a conspicuous loosening-up of colour: theirs is a fresh, bright chromatics dominated by pinks, cyans and yellows. These surfaces are also marked by a flatness that is alternately delicious and disturbing: Kallat has adapted the strategies of the billboard, in order to operate between the opposites, as he suggests, of Agit-Prop on the one hand and Pop on the other. It could also be suggested that Op Art and History Painting form another crossing of axes for the present work” (Ranjit Hoskote, “The Pictorial Declarative: Reflections on Jitish Kallat’s Recent Works 2002-2005”, Jitish Kallat, Walsh Gallery and Gallery Chemould exhibition catalogue, 2004-05, p. 39).

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