Jitish Kallat
Elicitation #2 (Cassiopeia A)
Artist
Jitish Kallat
(1974, Mumbai), Indian
Original Title
Elicitation #2 (Cassiopeia A)
Date2022
Medium3D print, SLS with Nylon PA1
Dimensions16 × 36 × 20 cm
Classificationssculpture
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionJitish Kallat is one of the most prominent Indian contemporary artists. His paintings, photographs, drawings, and videos are inspired by the people and environment of his hometown of Mumbai. Since the 1990s, he has documented the hectically transforming reality of India caused by economic liberalization, intense globalization, and the rise of information technology, which have connected the country with the entire world. His partially biographic work explores themes of new cosmopolitanism and consumerist lifestyles in relation to Indian mythology and the foundational figures of Indian independence, Džaváharlál Néhrú and Mahátma Gándí. He also explores questions of subsistence, death, and varied ways of perceiving time. Kallat often uses quotation, referencing elements of pop art and Dadaism as well as Persian miniatures and billboards, which contrast with his hand-crafted aesthetic. The hybrid visual expression of these enigmatically composed motifs oscillates between showing and obscuring, between sophistication and rawness.
Elicitation #2 (Cassiopeia A) (2022) is a three-dimensional visualization of the remains of a dead star from a stellar explosion that occurred 11,000 light years away. While the star, the youngest known supernova remnant in our Milky Way Galaxy, blew up 11,000 years ago, its light only reached Earth in the late 1600s. The model was created using NASA’s open-source files modelled based on the Sptizer Space Telescope data and can be viewed as a conceptual prompt within the exhibition rather than as a sculptural artwork. Kallat’s Elicitations function as reflective pauses for contemplating the complex interlacing of the immediate and the cosmic, the past and present—a recurrent motif in much of his work.
Jitish Kallat (*1974, Mumbai) graduated from the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art in Mumbai in 1996. He has exhibited at museums and institutions worldwide including the Tate Modern in London, the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, the Kunstmuseum Bern, the Serpentine Galleries in London, and the Museum Tinguely in Basel. His works are included in collections of institutions such as the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Saatchi Gallery in London, and the Singapore Art Museum. In 2014, he was the curator and art director of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. In 2017, the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi hosted an exhibition presenting an overview of his work.
Elicitation #2 (Cassiopeia A) (2022) is a three-dimensional visualization of the remains of a dead star from a stellar explosion that occurred 11,000 light years away. While the star, the youngest known supernova remnant in our Milky Way Galaxy, blew up 11,000 years ago, its light only reached Earth in the late 1600s. The model was created using NASA’s open-source files modelled based on the Sptizer Space Telescope data and can be viewed as a conceptual prompt within the exhibition rather than as a sculptural artwork. Kallat’s Elicitations function as reflective pauses for contemplating the complex interlacing of the immediate and the cosmic, the past and present—a recurrent motif in much of his work.
Jitish Kallat (*1974, Mumbai) graduated from the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art in Mumbai in 1996. He has exhibited at museums and institutions worldwide including the Tate Modern in London, the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, the Kunstmuseum Bern, the Serpentine Galleries in London, and the Museum Tinguely in Basel. His works are included in collections of institutions such as the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Saatchi Gallery in London, and the Singapore Art Museum. In 2014, he was the curator and art director of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. In 2017, the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi hosted an exhibition presenting an overview of his work.
Milan Knížák
1977-1981
