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Ranbir Kaleka is a storyteller of many means. Regardless of the medium he utilizes to express the figures and landscapes of his imagination, his works walk the tight rope between reality and fantasy, tactile yet dreamlike.

Over the years, through his versatile practice, Kaleka's works have explored notions of space and temporality. By 1999, he had started incorporating movement in his works via video, while never really abandoning... Ranbir Kaleka is a storyteller of many means. Regardless of the medium he utilizes to express the figures and landscapes of his imagination, his works walk the tight rope between reality and fantasy, tactile yet dreamlike.

Over the years, through his versatile practice, Kaleka's works have explored notions of space and temporality. By 1999, he had started incorporating movement in his works via video, while never really abandoning the canvas-like stationary surface. His efforts in this regard may be traced to the artist's fascination with cinema, and ended up transforming Kaleka's canvases into animated surfaces. This interest developed further over the years, resulting in Kaleka's unique video-art practice, where the artist-storyteller uses a combination of painting, sound, light and movement to express himself.

The present lot, one of the artist's most seminal video works, is a four channel video projection of 15 minute duration, imposed on four painted canvases. The work depicts a bird seller, a family group, an older man in a suit and tie, and a pair of Sikh men drying fabric for a turban. These characters are sanctified with a dual presence - one as actors in a film and the second as figures on the canvases onto which the film is projected. Each character moves between its two manifestations - first stationary on canvas, and then imbued with movement once the video is played.

Crossings is based on a script composed by the artist about a Sikh man and his turban. Writing about this work, Courtney Martin notes, "Throughout the video, the color of the turban morphs into vibrant forms, triggering the character's move through natural and built environments. The concern with migration manifests a complex examination of progress and motion as visual qualities wherein the painted portions of the panels are revealed by tonal shifts in the video and by intermittent blank screens. At times the projected image is in soft focus; in other sections, the colors and image provide a sharp contrast to the background. In addition to painting the screens, Kaleka imbues the video with a painterly quality, which is in dialogue with traditional landscape and portrait painting" ("Ranbir Kaleka", Art Asia Pacific, No. 48, Spring 2006, p. 89).

Johan Pijnappel, who interviewed Kaleka in 2006, explains that the artist has been contemplating the concept of Crossings for some years. He has been working the idea through in all its complexities with regard to scale, choreography and sound so it carries the 'charge' he has been seeking. The video/paintings tell two intermingling stories. One is about a group of people that seem to have been rendered homeless. Without any possessions, they wait at the edge of a political/geographical/psychological boundary where they twitch, shudder, inspect one another, or occasionally holler into the distance. The second story is about a boy's 'rites of passage', in which symbols of community and self-identity are passed on, in this case a Sikh turban. In his interview with Pijnappel, the artist defined the contents of this work, noting, "It all relates to the notion of desire for a place… A psychological space that allows you a movement from one point to another. Where one space of comfort leads to another space of comfort" ("Ranbir Kaleka", Icon Indian Contemporary, Venice, 2005, p.30).

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