‘Stations of a Pause’ by Jitish Kallat at Gallery Chemould Prescott Road in Mumbai

MUMBAI.- After a gap of over three years since his last solo exhibition in his hometown Mumbai, Jitish Kallat opened ‘Stations of a Pause’ on 22nd March at Chemould Prescott Road. The show will be on view until 10th May 2011.

For this exhibition the gallery space at Chemould Prescott Road is split into three separate units; of which a large portion of the gallery is shaped like a maze. Here Kallat is showing a 753-part photographic work, titled “Epilogue”, tracing, his father’s life through all the moons he saw from the day he was born on 2nd April 1936 to the day of his death on 2nd Dec 1998. Measuring his father’s lifespan with the approximately 22,000 moons that he saw in the 63 years of his life, every moon in this piece is replaced with the image of a progressively consumed ‘roti’ (staple indian bread), morphing the image of a moon with a waxing or waning meal, marking the cycle of life itself as periodical rotations of fullness and emptiness.

Talking about the piece Kallat says: “The last moon he saw was on the night of 1st December 1998 and hence the last frame remains dark and empty, with a single moon which appears almost like a full stop. I began by thinking about my father’s life but the piece is equally about time, about the cycle of life being periodic rotations of fullness and emptiness. A viewer can enter and read the piece from anywhere; most people have entered the piece through their own birthday and journeyed along only to reach the very last frame of my father’s life and find several questions about life enshrined in there.”

Yet another work in the show is an immersive video projection titled ‘Forensic Trail of the Grand Banquest’. This piece simulates a journey through space wherein planetary and stellar formations, galactic clusters and nebulae are replaced by hundreds of x-ray scans of food. This dark, cryptic, hypnotic space when viewed a little longer can begin to appear like floating cellular formations, suspended organs and tumours etc. morphing the insides of the body with the dark, indeterminate cosmic space; the two pieces can be seen in conjunction, together evoking notions of sustenance, survival and mortality. Also part of the exhibition is a series of five recent paintings called, ‘Untitled (Stations of a Pause)’.

Jitish Kallat also has an ongoing solo exhibition titled ‘Public Notice 3’ at the Art Institute of Chicago which opened on 11th September 2010 and will be on view for the entire year closing on 12th September 2011. Some of his works can be seen at Musee de Lyon as part of the ‘Indian Highway’ show while his drawings titled ‘Traumanama (The Cry of the Gland)’ are currently part of the ‘Watercolour’ exhibition at Tate Britian. Later this month he opens another solo exhibition titled ‘Fieldnotes: tomorrow was here yesterday’ at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum responding to the rich collection of this museum, the oldest museum in Mumbai narrating the city’s history.