Jitish Kallat – “Circadian Study”

Jitish Kallat - "Circadian Study"

Jitish Kallat “Circadian Study”
Nature Morte Gallery – Until Dec 31, 2020 New Delhi (India)

 

 

 

 

 

The play on words in parentheses in the title of Jitish Kallat’s virtual exhibition “The circadian study (contact tracing)”. Alludes both to its predominant medium, drawing. With the now familiar term to identify routes of infection during the pandemic. Specifically, Kallat explores how the Covid-19 crisis has affected the rhythms of our species’ way of life. How the lockdown made the passage of day and night. A little otiosis as a chronological marker.

The eponymous suite of “contact paths”. With graphite and watercolor. Consists of red and green outlines of shadows of twigs. A record of the sun’s daily journey on paper. Make time as a pigment. Obscure words annotate the drawings. “Notes and ephemeral mental intuitions”. Which, according to the artist, are illegible even for him in the hours following the end of the lines. Enduring works that play with the tension between the control of artists. Natural phenomena are not new to Kallat. Study of the wind (time of day of the month of the season), 2015. Study of the rain (time of day of the month) of the season), 2016. It involved exposing graphite covered with a flammable adhesive to the elements. Or treat it with epoxy once it does.

Kallat has often explored how the cosmic and the organic rhyme. In Circadian Study, the abstraction of the sculptural (a three-dimensional twig). In the pictorial (pseudo-scientific diagrams. Through tracking solar movement is perhaps a commentary on nature reducing life to a plane. A tender reminder of planetary vulnerability.

 

Nature Morte Gallery→  7, Vasant Vihar Poorvi Marg, Block A, Vasant Vihar, New Delhi, Delhi 110070, Inde

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