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Lot Essay
Jitish Kallat's practice centres on his home city of Mumbai, from which his instantly recognisable figures and scenes are derived. Paralleling Kehinde Wiley's sensitive renderings of populations traditionally excluded from the elite practice of portraiture, Kallat uses the canvas as a space to honour the marginalised and dispossessed of Mumbai's cityscapes. In this painting, from the series Universal Recipient, Kallat engages with Mumbai's security guards, who quietly observe urban life in the metropolis. Their probative glances encapsulate Kallat's description of them as raconteurs of Mumbai's inner secrets. These are the night watchmen - the guardians of a city that never sleeps.
Describing a similar series of works, Kallat notes that these paintings are "vast collision portraits of the thumping, claustrophobic city-street (K) The painting itself is mounted on bronze sculptures, re-creations of gargoyles that are found atop the 120 year old Victoria Terminus Building in the centre of Mumbai. The gargoyle, herein symbolising the figure of the bystander artist self, has been a daily witness to this constant calamity of the street running into itself." (Artist statement, Matters of Art, accessed September 2014). A major retrospective of his work is currently showing at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Delhi.
Describing a similar series of works, Kallat notes that these paintings are "vast collision portraits of the thumping, claustrophobic city-street (K) The painting itself is mounted on bronze sculptures, re-creations of gargoyles that are found atop the 120 year old Victoria Terminus Building in the centre of Mumbai. The gargoyle, herein symbolising the figure of the bystander artist self, has been a daily witness to this constant calamity of the street running into itself." (Artist statement, Matters of Art, accessed September 2014). A major retrospective of his work is currently showing at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Delhi.