Jitish Kallat - Contemporary Evening Sale London Sunday, July 5, 2009 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • Provenance

    Private collection, London (acquired directly from the artist)

  • Exhibited

    Mumbai, Chemould Contemporary Art Gallery, Sweatopia, 8 December, 2007 - 4 January, 2008 (another example exhibited); London, Albion Gallery, Jitish Kallat, 11 June - 31 August, 2008 (another example exhibited); Seoul, Arario Gallery, Jitish Kallat: Skinside Outside, 28 August - 18 October, 2008 (another example exhibited); Wolverhampton, United Kingdom, Initial Access: The Frank Cohen Collection, Passage to India II, 17 March - 1 August, 2009 (another example exhibited); Den Hagg, Netherlands, GEM Museum Voor Actuelle Kunst, India Contemporary, 28 March - 21 June, 2009 (another example exhibited)
     

  • Catalogue Essay


    Encompassing painting, sculpture, drawing, photography and installation, the oeuvre of Jitish Kallat is expansive and cutting edge. His densely layered autobiographical works are not only well informed by the classical themes from the history of art, but more importantly address issues pertaining to his homeland of India.The present lot, the first work in Kallat's highly acclaimed series of skeletal sculptures, deals with birth and death and the narrative of the human struggle for survival. Using the twin codes of pop art and agitprop, Kallat's politically charged yet playful artistic vocabulary is a poignant commentary on the state  of a nation caught between its past and its future. Fashioned out of the skeletal forms of the human body, Collidonthus is the  wrecked carcass of a life-size automobile. Cast in resin, mimics of bones and teeth makeup the fuselage of a car, abundantly found in the congested streets of the artist's native Mumbai. Literally and figuratively the skeletal body of the automobile evokes the grim reality of India's chaotic and overcrowded cities.The pandemonium of urban life  where cars,buses, scooters, cycles, cats, cows and humans collide andcoalesce is not sustainable. In fact, Collindonthus, a title clearly referencing the classification of prehistoric dinosaurs, could be conceived as a museum exhibit in future  years.The text  on the accompanying plaque referring to Collindonthus as a relic  of India's 21st century society, a fossil of an antiquated automobile from a pivotal period in the nation's tumultuous history.
     

38

Collidonthus

2007
Resin, paint, steel, brass.
172 x 404 x 152.3 cm. (159 x 67 3/4 x 60 in).

This work is from an edition of three plus one artist's proof.

Estimate
£100,000 - 150,000 

Contemporary Evening Sale

29 June 2009, 7pm
London