like the decomposed vertebrae of a prehistoric creature, the large-scale sculptures of jitish kallat resonate with a sentiment of death and mortality that are recurrent themes throughout the indian artist’s oeuvre. kallat’s series of bone vehicles references his own photographs of cars, trucks, bicycles, and buses that had been incinerated and torched during riots. he has transformed the visual of the burnt-umber endoskeletons into intricate white sculptures mimicking fossilized remains that he describes as ‘grotesque, burlesque and arabesque in equal measure’. ‘aquasaurus’ and ‘ignitaurus’ are two examples from the series — hybrid pieces that compound the aesthetic of mammoths found in natural history museums and specialized transportation devices from an automobile-expo. the refashioned carcasses can be seen as carrying, even through a playful approach, a broad and deep inclination of extinction and death. kallat is currently exhibiting work at art stage singapore presented by ARNDT, berlin.
