Jitish Kallat: Tmesis

Sperone Westwater presents Jitish Kallat‘s second solo exhibition, entitled “Tmesis”. The exhibition links artistic, historical, and scientific investigations, interweaving the immediate and the cosmic, the telescopic and the microscopic, the past and the present.

The main gallery presents new double-sided, multi-sided photographic works entitled “Epicycles, 2020-21“, which began during the pandemic as an intimate diary of hand-drawn entries; a ledger of seemingly accidental changes documented by the artist in her studio. Gradually these developed into layered photographic works that weave together markers of change – a fallen stem, a crack in the wall, or an abstraction under a chair.

For the past year, Kallat has been counting the human population through an algorithmic system. The last drawing shows a timestamp appearing alongside three sets of loaded numbers – integers that algorithmically estimate the human population at a given time, along with the estimated births and deaths that have occurred up to that specific time of day. With intricate graphite and watercolor pencil marks and chalk stains, Kallat’s pictorial abstraction contrasts with the precise data, forming a triangulation of life by mapping birth, death, and time. Creating one drawing a day, Integer Studies probes an arc of existential questions that morph into ecological issues, from reflections on climate change and extinction to evolution and decay.