Jitish Kallat b. 1974

signed, titled and dated 2006 on the reverse

Bose Pacia Gallery, New York.
Acquired directly from the above by the current owner.

Exh.Cat., Rickshawpolis, pp. 26-30 illustrated
Made by Indians, Galerie Enrico Navarra, 2006, p. 262, illustrated

A few very minor surface abrasions to the edges and an area to the centre of the work. Overall good condition.
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'Most of my work absorbs the twin codes of pop and agit-prop, addressing 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, Made by Indians, Galerie Enrico Navarra, 2006)

The work of the Bombay-based artist Jitish Kallat has affinities with many elements of contemporary Indian urban culture, from film and political posters to the slick billboards of international advertising. The artist resurrects the decayed images of mass media, piecing together old photographs, faxes and photocopies to create a visual collage from which he paints his canvases. Adding his own text and symbols like truncated slogans or brand names across his paintings, Kallat exposes the idiosyncrasies of mechanical reproduction by revealing the grainy resolutions and cropped compositions of his news clippings and internet printouts. Kallat's large-scale canvases tend to be semi autobiographical but hint at more universal themes. Jitish says of his works, "Although the works are in the manner of a personal diary they are often modelled after and made to simulate the weather beaten walls of a city. The wall is a carrier of graffiti and posters: a public pin-board on which the community displays its emotions and protests. It is like these shared muniments that I choose to make my inscriptions: by giving a public dimension to private records." The works appear to be pictorial quests that seek to answer the riddles of contemporary urban India. Jitish states, "my art is more like a researcher's project who uses quotes rather than an essay, with each painting necessitating a bibliography."

Rickshawpolis - 3 (Lot 46) was first exhibited in 2006 as part of Jitish Kallat's solo show of the same name.  The exhibition was shown in three cities (New Delhi, Milan and Sydney) and provides a portrait of the artist's home town of Bombay (Mumbai) The exhibition included sculptures, photography, paintings and installation, their unifying theme being that the scenes they depicted or referenced were the hectic overcrowded streets of northern Bombay.  The rickshaw the stereotypically middle class form of public transport that proudly honks its presence throughout urban India becomes the brand name for Kallat's body of work. Each painting containing the frontal outline of the rickshaw in badge like form at the top left of the work (reminiscent of the London underground symbol) and presented like a fashion logo to his audience. 'Replete with details lovingly collected, a necessary sense of humour and palpable degree of frustration, the artist himself stands at the centre of this urban maelstrom, attempting to process visual and sensual overloads into works of art that might stand apart from the chaos while illuminating something of its conundrums.' (Peter Nagy, Jitish Kallat: Rickshawpolis and other Mythologies, Exhibition catalogue Foreword) The term Rickshawpolis is a typically multicultural and multidimensional Kallat creation for the Rickshaw is an identifiably Indian contemporary machine whilst the Greek term Polis is laden with the political ideals of ancient Europe, the combination of the two as the title for the show is revealing.  The term itself presents quite succinctly the polarities of the Indian urban experience, the idealised vision of a democratic urban population placed alongside the reality of the belching kitsch black and yellow form of the polluting rickshaw, that for most is the day to day experience of travel in urban India. In Kallat's words the paintings are 'vast collision portraits of the thumping, claustrophobic city-street, part of my persistent project to find fresh ways to register the life I see around. Cars, buses, scooters, cycles, cats, cows and humans collide and coalesce to form mega-explosions. These 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'. (Jitish Kallat as quoted by D Ananth, Scare Quotes: Jitish Kallat's AgitPop, Rickshawpolis exhibition Catalogue, 2006)  These paintings of 'mega explosions' of urban humanity are supported on the unlikely sculptural forms of two gargoyles.  The gargoyles themselves copies of the stone carved forms set along the roof tops of the ultimate architectural symbol of British Empire in Bombay, the central railway station aptly named Victoria Terminus.  The choice of these sculptural forms is equally insightful as they are the silent witnesses to the ageing transport infrastructure created by the British that now struggles to support the mass of humanity that, like the annual monsoon rains which spews from the mouths of the gargoyles, spreads out on a daily basis from the southern transport hub of the city. 'These creatures – earlier avatars, as it were, of the contemporary bystander/artist – have been observing on a daily basis and over the last 120 years, the increasingly swelling commuter hordes emerging from or disappearing into, the maws of the railway station they adorn.' (ibid) Again the symbols that the artist uses in his works presents the polarities of the Indian dream of the 'megapolis' of contemporary India, versus the reality of the congested streets and transport system that is central to the reality of the urban experience.