01 June - 02 August 2008




Jitish Kallat (born 1974, Mumbai) is one of the most exciting and dynamic Asian artists to have received international recognition in recent years. Working across a variety of media including painting, sculpture, photography and installation, his work reflects a deep involvement with the city of his birth (Mumbai) and derives much of its visual language from his immediate urban environment. His subject matter has been described previously as 'the dirty, old, recycled and patched-together fabric of urban India'. Wider concerns include India's attempts to negotiate its entry into a globalised economy, addressing housing and transportation crises, city planning, caste and communal tensions, and government accountability.

Many of Kallat's works focus on Mumbai's downtrodden or dispossessed inhabitants, though treating them in a bold, colourful and highly graphic manner. His series of 'Dawn Chorus' paintings, for example, depicts the street urchins who take advantage of red traffic lights to sell books to commuters in Mumbai. Rather than focusing on their reduced circumstances, Kallat celebrates their resilience and their enterprising spirit. Each child's hair is a collision of traffic and pedestrians, forming a city that sits atop their heads. In this respect the paintings are double portraits, depictions of street urchins but also portraits of the claustrophobic and chaotic city, its countless narratives tumbling Medusa-like from each child's head. Kallat traditionally mounts these paintings on bronze sculptures that are re-created from the wall adornments found on the 120-year-old Victoria Terminus train station in the centre of Mumbai.

An ongoing preoccupation in Kallat's work, the theme of human struggle also dominates 'Cenotaph (A Deed of Transfer)'. The departure point for this series of twenty lenticulars was the demolition of a squatter settlement in which people's homes were reclaimed as city walls and quickly adorned with film posters and advertising bills. Kallat highlights the traces of assault made by the authorities by literally foregrounding them in the three-dimensional format of the lenticular print. The resulting image condenses the dramatic transformation of these contested spaces into a single frame.

The themes of hope and survival are further explored in the 'Friendly Fire (Clouds in the Water)' drawings, remediations of newspaper images which documented a bizarre episode in Mumbai's recent history. Widespread reports claimed a heavily polluted area of sea water around Mahim Creek had turned sweet, prompting thousands of Mumbaiites to bathe in and drink the murky water. Though the water in fact remained as polluted as ever, there was not a single instance of illness recorded from the mass cleansing. Kallat focuses on the emancipatory potential of this miracle, Mumbai's 'unclean' captured in a moment of communal joy and catharsis.

One of his most ambitious works to date, the mammoth 7 metre long sculpture 'Aquasaurus' forms the centrepiece of Kallat's first exhibition with Haunch of Venison. The latest in Kallat's series of skeletal sculptures, it is a life-size recreation of one of the water tankers common to Mumbai's streets. Fashioned from bones and dramatically lit in the manner of a natural history display, it is reminiscent of a prehistoric skeleton: 'the abandoned carcass of an antiquated automobile in the fast-changing Indian streetscape', according to the artist.

Jitish Kallat studied painting at the Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai and has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally. In addition to his inclusion in important museum exhibitions such as 'Thermocline of Art – New Asian Waves' at the ZKM Museum in Karlsruhe (2007) and 'Century City' at Tate Modern in London (2001), Kallat has participated widely in biennials and triennials, including The 5th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Australia (2006) and The 6th Gwangju Biennale in Korea (2006). Recent solo exhibitions have taken place with galleries in Beijing, London and Mumbai. Kallat's work is held in a number of important public and private collections internationally including MOCA, Los Angeles, the Saatchi collection and the Frank Cohen collection. 'Universal Recipient' is Jitish Kallat's first exhibition with Haunch of Venison.

Jitish Kallat and Haunch of Venison wish to acknowledge the kindness and generosity shown by Abhay Maskara in the loan of his space, Gallery Maskara on 3rd Pasta Lane, Mumbai, to preview 'Aquasaurus' on 21 April 2008.

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