Dubai: Geometry and geography are at the heart of the new exhibition by contemporary Indian artist Jitesh Kalat in Dubai titled “Order of Magnitude”.
Kalat, from Mumbai, presents his first solo exhibition in the Middle East on Al Serkal Street in Dubai until July 1st.
The artist presents paintings, multimedia installations, drawings, and site-specific interventions that reflect his vision of the relationship between the universe and the Earth.
Qalat told Arab News that the project, titled “Integrated Studies (Sketches from Life),” started by chance. (Submitted)
As soon as you enter the spacious and airy room, you see a line of drawings running around the gallery, similar to the horizon and the equator.
Qalat told Arab News that the project, titled “Integrated Studies (Sketches from Life),” started by chance.
“For most of 2020, for some reason, I used to have websites on my homepage revealing our numbers on the planet. It went on for a few months, but I haven’t fully resolved it. The artist said.
“On January 1, 2021, I came back from my morning run and had this instinct to paint. Kalat said, pointing to the first frame of the perfectly aligned series.
Kalat produced 365 works in 2021 (supplied)
Each drawing, which contains geometric shapes, is made using a pencil and paint. It also contains three sets of numbers: the number of the world’s population estimated by the algorithm, the number of newborns and the number of deaths recorded at the time the work was created.
Kallat produced 365 artworks in 2021, creating something new every day. In the gallery, he was able to display everything the walls might hold, and that equated to regarding five to six months of paintings, according to Kalat.
Next to these artworks is a wall-sized painting entitled “The Postulates of a Restless Ray”, the perimeter of which takes the form of the conical projection of the ground for Albers.
Next to these artworks is a wall-size plaque titled “Unrelenting Rays Postulates.” (Submitted)
The work begins with a precarious sectional grid – drawn with a watercolor pencil – that opens the globe to a flat plane.
“I take the shape of a world map, but then I start in this planetary shape and use the images that come from under the ocean, under-ocean shapes, celestial shapes, body shapes, and plant shapes. Kalat, who has held exhibitions all over the world, including in Tokyo, Berlin, Milan, Sydney, Chicago and Brussels, explained that it is like working on multiple geometries in the world through a kind of abstraction.
In the center of his gallery, Kallat presents a double-sided and multi-cornered photographic work entitled “Epicycles”.
In the center of his gallery, Kallat presents a double-sided and multi-cornered photographic work entitled “Epicycles”. (Submitted)
This series began at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic with a hand-drawn diary that records the subtle changes in the Kallat workshop, which he lived in for some time to avoid infecting his family.
He said, “I started looking at things I might not have looked at before, like a little crevice in the studio wall. I started noticing small and small changes in my studio environment and keeping my notebook drawings.”
He then filled the sketchbook with pictures from the 1955 Family of Man exhibition organized by photographer Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The resulting prints combine the artist’s daily notes with archival images of human solidarity captured by photographers around the world. The figures shown appear on a lenticular surface and disappear as one moves through the work, giving a complex picture of time.
It displays images of The Golden Record — a 12-inch gold-plated phonograph record that traveled on NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 space missions in 1977 — resting on shelves along two opposite walls. (Submitted)
On the second floor of the gallery, Kalat presented his immersive installation “Covering Letter (terranum nuncius)”.
It displays images of The Golden Record — a 12-inch gold-plated phonograph record that traveled on NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 space missions in 1977 — resting on shelves along two opposite walls.
Housed within programmed LED frames, 116 parallax printed images flash in a breath-like rhythm.
“These are all images and sounds that are currently in interstellar space, beyond the reach of the solar system. They left planet Earth in 1977. “This being, in an empty space, can go on. It might be the only thing that survived. The idea was that if such an object was found by an alien, what would we tell them?
Housed within programmed LED frames, 116 parallax printed images flash in a breath-like rhythm. (Submitted)
The preparation of Cover Letters includes scientific, anatomical, and cosmological charts with the aim of summarizing a summary of life on Earth as it was in 1977.
The exhibition space is permeated with the sounds of the greeting of the universe that are included in the Golden Record in 55 languages.
As the two Voyager spacecraft continue their journey through space, now more than 14 billion miles from Earth, this work is a reminder of our world to another unknown.
Kalat told Arab News, “I am very interested in some subtle invisible geometry. Each exhibition and each work has its own architecture that tries to reach another intuition through its architecture.
