JITISH KALLAT | ORDER OF MAGNITUDE

16febAll Day01julJITISH KALLAT | ORDER OF MAGNITUDE

Event Details

Ishara Art Foundation opens 2022 with Order of Magnitude by Jitish Kallat, the artist’s first major solo exhibition in West Asia and the Levant.

Presenting new works that include paintings, multimedia installations, drawings and site-specific interventions, the exhibition reflects Jitish Kallat’s profound deliberations on the interrelationship between the cosmic and the terrestrial.

Jitish Kallat’s oeuvre sits between fluid speculation, precise measurement and conceptual conjectures producing dynamic forms of image-making. Using abstract, schematic, notational and representational languages, he engages with different modes of address, seamlessly interlacing the immediate and the cosmic, the telescopic and the microscopic, the past and present. In Order of Magnitude, one finds a contemplation of overarching interconnectivity on the individual, universal, planetary and extra-terrestrial dimensions.

The viewer is first confronted with Integer Studies (Drawings from Life), which run through the space resembling both the horizon and the equator. Since the beginning of 2021, Kallat followed a ritual of making one daily drawing as part of a durational study in graphite, aquarelle pencil and gesso stains. Each work comprises diverse forms anchored by the same three sets of numbers: the algorithmically estimated world population, the number of new births, and the death count noted at the particular moment of the work’s creation. Human life and death are abstracted in drawings that are both graphic and painterly, prompting questions of extinction and evolution.

Seen alongside these studies is a wall-sized painting titled Postulates from a Restless Radius, whose perimeter takes the form of the conic Albers projection of the Earth. The work begins as an unstable, cross-sectional grid (in aquarelle pencil) that opens up the globe on a flat plane. There is no cartographic intent here; in place of planetary geography it assembles signs and speculations, at once evoking botanical, suboceanic, celestial, and geological formations. Postulates from a Restless Radius is an exploratory abstraction of forms that suggest signatures of growth and entropy.

Placed centrally are four double-sided and multi-scopic photo works titled Epicycles. This series began during the early days of the pandemic in 2020 with a hand-drawn journal capturing minute changes in Kallat’s studio – such as cracks surfacing on walls. Kallat embeds these chance encounters with iconic pictures from the Family of Man exhibition organized by photographer Edward Steichen at the MoMA, New York, in 1955. The resulting prints combine the artist’s everyday observations with archival images of human solidarity taken by photographers from around the world. Meticulously composed on a lenticular surface, the depicted figures appear and disappear as one moves around the work, yielding a complex portrait of time in its transience and ephemerality.

A new iteration of Kallat’s immersive installation Covering Letter (terranum nuncius) occupies Ishara’s mezzanine floor. Images from the Golden Records that travelled as part of NASA’s 1977 Voyager 1 and 2 space mission rest on shelves along two opposite walls. Placed inside programmed LED frames, 116 parallax prints flicker in a breath-like cadence. They include scientific, anatomical and cosmological diagrams as well as flora, fauna and architecture, in an attempt to encapsulate a summary of life on Earth. Permeating the exhibition space are the sounds of salutation to the universe that were on the Golden Records in 55 languages. As the two Voyagers continue their journey in space, now over 14 billion miles away from Earth, this work is a reminder of an epic presentation of “our” world to an unknown other. At a time when we find ourselves in a deeply divided globe, Kallat foregrounds these images and reverberations for a collective meditation on ourselves as residents of a single planet, where the !other”#is an unfamiliar !intergalactic alien.

An obsolete map of our cosmic neighbourhood, the return address marked on the Records is projected within the installation facing a bench in the shape of the Doomsday Clock. The symbolic clock proposed by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is reset every year, representing our growing proximity to a hypothetical man-made global catastrophe that is expected to strike at midnight.

Finally, a site-specific intervention by the artist titled N-E-S-W serves as an allusive clue to reading this exhibition. Embedded within the foundation’s architecture, a functional magnetic compass is inset within the flooring. N-E-S-W summons the cardinal directions of the Earth, aligned to invisible force fields, rendering both the exhibition and Ishara into planetary surveying devices.

Finally, a site-specific intervention by the artist titled N-E-S-W serves as an allusive clue to reading this exhibition. Embedded within the foundation’s architecture, a functional magnetic compass is inset within the flooring. N-E-S-W summons the cardinal directions of the Earth, aligned to invisible force fields, rendering both the exhibition and Ishara into planetary surveying devices.


Courtesy of Ishara Art Foundation

Feature caption: Installation view of ‘Jitish Kallat: Order of Magnitude’ at Ishara Art Foundation, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist and Ishara Art Foundation. Photography by Ismail Noor/Seeing Things.

more

Time

February 16 (Wednesday) - July 1 (Friday)

Location

Ishara Art Foundation

A3, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1, Dubai, UAE. P.O. Box 181992

Organizer

Ishara Art Foundation

info@ishara.org A3, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1, Dubai, UAE. P.O. Box 181992

Learn More

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER

selections-arts-logo

SELECTIONS is a platform for the arts, focusing on the Arab World.

Selections editorial presents a quarterly print magazine and weekly online publication with high quality content on all subjects related to Art and Culture. Full of world-leading artworks, exquisite brand imagery, original creative illustrations and insightful written articles.
Selections Viewing Rooms presents carefully curated online art shows aiming not only to shed light on contemporary art executed by living artists, but also for viewers to buy contemporary fine art, prints & multiples, photography, street art and collectibles.
Discover the previous and current shows here.
Cultural Narratives foundation is an extensive collection that is travelling the world by leading established and emerging talents aiming to reflect the culture of the region in their works.

RANDOM READS

‘Flames’ by Jean Boghossian at Anima Gallery Doha

Jean Boghossian’s solo exhibition ‘Flames,’ hosted by Anima Gallery in Doha, Qatar, serves as a testament to his evolution from a jeweller to an artist. Coming from a background deeply rooted in jewellery craftsmanship, Boghossian’s early artistic endeavours were shaped…

‘Whispers of Nature’ by Ghassan Zard at Galerie Tanit Beirut

Galerie Tanit, Beirut presents ‘Whispers of Nature’ a solo exhibition by Ghassan Zard from February 22, 2024 until April 3, 2024. In the exhibition the viewers will get the chance to explore the works of Ghassan Zard and have their…

‘Ideologues of the Game and Other Seekers of the End’ by Majid Fathizadeh at Ab-Anbar Gallery

Ab-Anbar Gallery presents ‘Ideologues of the Game and Other Seekers of the End,’ a curated exhibition by Hannah Feldman that marks the inaugural solo show of Majid Fathizadeh outside his native Iran, where he has been actively creating and exhibiting…

The Custodian: Interview with Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi

This article appeared in The Custodian Issue #66 that was dedicated to the Dalloul Art Foundation and its custodian Basel Dalloul in which we covered the foundation’s mission, influence and importance in championing and safeguarding Arab art for generations to…

Fire Station: Artist in Residence: ‘The Voyager is the Narrator: New York & Paris Residency Exhibition’

Fire Station: Artist in Residence announces the unveiling of the exhibition, ‘The Voyager is the Narrator: New York & Paris Residency Exhibition,’ opening on February 7, 2024. The exhibition will feature the works of 10 artists who took part in…

Curated by at Art Dubai 2024 Contemporary

A selection of galleries exhibiting in the Contemporary section from Art Dubai’s 17th edition have chosen a work from their booth. Here’s what they had to say: Efie Gallery: El Anatsui, The Bend in The River, 2022. 125 cm x…

march 2024

26oct(oct 26)09:0005mar(mar 5)09:00'MEHDI MOUTASHAR: INTROSPECTION AS RESISTANCE'

10nov09:0010mar09:00Armenia Contemplating the sacred

11nov(nov 11)09:0010mar(mar 10)09:00Sharjah Architecture Triennial