Jitish Kallat’s ‘The Astronomy of the Subway’ is on view at the Haunch of Venison, London. The ambitious exhibit is spread across seven large rooms of this prestigious art space with enormous works that range from 7 to 28 feet. These incorporate video, sculptural installation, photography and paintings.
Following his critically applauded show at Haunch of Venison (Zurich) in 2008, he returns to the gallery with the full range of his visual vocabulary.
Elaborating on the works, a curatorial note states, “A video projection shows x-rayed foodstuffs powerfully projected onto a dark celestial space. They pour into view as asteroids, stellar formations, planetary clusters and nebulae, whereas in a sculptural installation, a miniature crowd of rioting figures happens to scatter across the floor. The viewer’s height exaggerates their scale, as if seen through a telescope’s wrong end."
Another intricately treated sculpture piece comprises oversized black lead kerosene stove. It carries more than a hundred images culled from the porch of the VT railway station building. The decorative architectural friezes incorporate several images of animals all devouring each other and also clinging onto various foods.
Viewed together on a single sculpture, this sprawling mass is not unlike the daily grind of survival this porch bears is always witness to. In his large paintings, the body is deftly abstracted into ink blot formations. Its stretched muscles and dripping fluids become receptacles of urban trauma.
In ‘The Astronomy of the Subway’ the artist tackles his foundational themes of sustenance, survival and mortality as palpable in the contemporary urban environment of the city of Mumbai, He offsets a vivid, hand-made aesthetic with meticulous digitized renderings of streets almost fit-to-burst.
In this major international solo show, Jitish Kallat has experimented with extreme scales and proportions to create some highly dramatic works.
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