Jitish Kallat

Gallery Chemould, Mumbai

Mumbai, Gallery Chemould, ibid, 7 December 2000 - 6 January 2001

ibid, Gallery Chemould, Mumbai, 2000, unpaginated, illus.

Jitish Kallat: Panic Acid, Bodhi Art, Singapore, 2005, p. 88 illus.

Jhaveri, A., A Guide to a 101 Modern & Contemporary Indian Artists, Mumbai, 2005, p. 119

Jitish Kallat: Rickshawpolis, Nature Morte, Delhi, 2007, p. 10 illus.

Good overall condition. A few small areas of paint loss due to the way the paint is applied to the canvas have recently been stabilized. Water marks bottom left of canvas, inherent to work.
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Jitish Kallat's work examines the double-edged nature of globalisation, and how it impacts upon the daily grind of the urban poor living in India's most populous city, Mumbai. Highlighting issues of the rapid development and its social and economic implications, he focuses on the existence of the rural migrant, to whom urbanisation offers hope but also exploitation. Kallat's canvases depict the overcrowded and haphazard development that characterises Mumbai, where people, cars and buildings are constantly converging against a multi-layered backdrop of dearth, paucity, social inequality and corruption. His art is a representation of this strata of society, rendered in large-scale formats so that the sheer size of his canvases elevate their marginalised status. He portrays Mumbai as a city of many layers, not only socio-economic but also histo-political.

"Even if my early works were heavily autobiographical, the overcrowded and media saturated street festooned with billboards, provided me with my themes as well as my artistic language." (the artist quoted in Reality Filters in Jitish Kallat 365 Lives, Arario Gallery, Beijing, 2007, p.24).

Ode to the Spinal Cord focuses on the archaic but vital railway system of Mumbai. These local trains are the life-blood of the city or as Kallat indicates in his title they are the city's backbone. On a daily basis, many thousands of commuters crowd into trains that link the islands of Mumbai. These trains embody the claustrophobia and chaos that characterises Mumbai's streets. In Kallat's words, his paintings "are vast collision portraits of the thumping claustrophobic city-street, part of my persistent project is to find fresh ways to register the life I see around." (Deepak Ananth, Jitish Kallat: Rickshawpolis, Nature Morte, Delhi, 2007, p.10).

Ode to the Spinal Cord is one of Kallat's earliest representations of the metropolis as a metaphorical body and is a highly significant work in Kallat's oeuvre as it serves as a springboard for the development of Kallat's later works from his Rickshawpolis series to his sculptural installations.