MUMBAI.- Jitish Kallat returns to Mumbai with an exhibition of new works titled Sightings at Chemould Prescott Road. Five years have passed since his acclaimed solo exhibitions in Mumbai; Fieldnotes (Tomorrow Was Here Yesterday) at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, and Stations of a Pause at Chemould Prescott Road in 2011. In the intervening period Kallat has had major museum solos at San Jose Museum of art, Ian Potter Museum in Melbourne and Art Gallery of New South Wales, amongst numerous other exhibitions.

The exhibition Sightings brings together an assembly of conceptual and sensory propositions through a suite of drawings, sculptures, photo-pieces and video. Seen throughout the exhibition are the themes of time, sustenance, sleep, along with an interplay of scales and proximities, and evocations of the celestial; preoccupations that have recurred across his wide-ranging work.

Reminiscent of unknown neural networks, constellations or sacred geometries, the series of new drawings titled Wind Study (The Hour of the Day of the Month of the Season), become a device to read the complex forces of nature that inhabit the space and time of the artwork. Alternating as hand gestures and wind gestures, they could be read as transcripts of a meeting between wind and fire, between artistic free-will and determinism.

Seen up-close, the fruit’s surfaces displayed in the seven-part lenticular photographic work Sightings D19M12Y2015, begin to appear like telescopic snapshots of cosmic supernova explosions, contemplating the macro as manifesting within the micro. The sculpture titled The Infinite Episode is an assembly of ten sleeping species; a cosmic dormitory wherein they surrender bodily scale in a state of sleep. In a new singlechannel video conceived on an epic scale, connecting notions of the body, sustenance, the astral and the sky, 365 rotis morph with the waxing and waning images of the moon as if aeons of time were passing through an ever-changing annual lunar almanac. Flowchart, an hexagonal vitrine displaying working drawings, watercolours, tea-washes, gouaches and sculptural elements appears as a nursery to culture speculations and advance inquiries, a map of artistic meanderings.

Jitish Kallat’s solo project ‘Covering Letter’ will be on view at Jehangir Nicholson Gallery at CSMVS Museum until 28th February 2016.

Jitish Kallat was born in Mumbai in 1974, the city where he lives and works. He has been exhibited widely at museums and institutions, including Tate Modern and the Serpentine Gallery (London, 2008), Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels, 2006), ZKM (Karlsruhe, 2007), Kunstmuseum (Bern, 2007), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2008), the Gemeente Museum (The Hague, 2009), Martin Gropius Bau (Berlin, 2009), Musée national d’art moderne – Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2011), MAXXI (Rome, 2012). His work has been part of the Havana Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, Asia Pacific Triennale, Guangzhou Triennale, and the Kiev Biennale amongst others. His recent solo exhibitions at museums include the Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai (2010), the Art Institute of Chicago (2010-11), the Ian Potter Museum of Art in Melbourne (2012-2013) and the San Jose Museum of Art (2014). He was the curator and artistic director of the second edition of Kochi-Muziris Biennale, following the closing of which he has had solo exhbitions at Galerie Daniel Templon in Paris and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.

The artist lives and works in Bombay, India.