Jitish Kallat
Collidonthus 2007
Mixed media
404cm x 172.7cm x 152.3cm
Jitish Kallat
Born 1974,
Mumbai,India. Lives and works in Mumbai
Much of my
work involves the twin codes of pop and agitprop, adressing some of the classic
themes of art, birth, death, survival and the endless narratives of human
struggle. The highly populated city of Mumbai, where I live, is almost a
theatre where the codes of daily existence are pushed to the extreme and this
continually percolates my practice. Jitish
Kallat 1
Jitish
Kallat’s painting and sculpture incorporate modern technology and popular
essentials like the photocopy machine. His images evolve out of texts and
captions, well-known phrases and popular song titles. The close relationship
between words, images, tradition and contemporary symbols, is central to Jitish
Kallat’s work. For example. his work may juxtapose the traditional symbol of an
elephant with an abstract, photocopied representation of a monument. He
describes his large format paintings as ‘a vast collision of the thumping,
claustrophobic, city street part of my project to find ways to register the
life I see around me. Cars, buses, scooters, cycles, cats cows and humans
collide and coalesce to form mega- explosions. These optical jerks caused by
the high decibel of daily action can also be read as distorted reflections of a
city seen on the dented body of an automobile”. His sculpture of a wrecked car Colidonthus
2007 is typical of Jitish
Kallat’s concern with the dynamic pandemonium of urban life
in India’s chaotic and crowded cities. A full size version of a car, it grins
and leers at the audience. Like a ghost ship thrown up on the crazy shores of a
decimated metropolis.
