The POSTER revisited

Jitish Kallat's new work, after much globe-trotting, was here again with Gallery Chemould, Mumbai this February. And for the more informed, it reminded of his no-nonsense ability as a 'poster' maker!
The poster, a commonplace visual in the bollywood city of Mumbai, has always been and invitation for Jitish.He has devised means to rethink the poster as an evocative visual than a direct communication. The work, six tall canvases, had colours that looked rather funky, somewhat Warholian, and one clear image : that of a street urchin. They bear the stamp of the street. Sadak Chhaap, as an NGO used to
call them. The works have a presence of additional signifiers : a scream in all the works, for example, but the street urchin becomes monumenatised in all these canvases.
For Jitish, who 'arrived' in the field (read : market) seven years ago with autobiographical, memory-intense works, the colours and corrosion of a poster were equally important. His work took off from the physical corrosion in paint to the computerized defacement of the image, and thus they had something abstract about them. Although he used all the advantages that a photorealist exploits, Jitish's
definite diversion from photorealism was visible in his photocopy transfers. Some artists from Mumbai were already using the photocopy transfer technique while Jitish mastered it. Then came the computer and its image-editing softwares, that helped Jitish try a different language of corrosion. Now on, the physical tampering with layers of paint was replaced by well-executed contours of a digitally corroded image. The abstract remained with him, while he was getting the images executed (may just by) projecting them onto the canvas.
With the scale of demand-supply ratio Jitish handles, his ouvre cannot now ignore the reproductive part. The newness, then, lies not with how he renders the image or how his canvases look different from the just-shown ones, but with what images he shows and why. The why aspect makes him contemporary.
Jitish knows this. He would talk about the Ramnami sect and his long conversations/emails with a (US-based) scholar who researched the sect. The ploy for self-defence, insists Jitish, finds its place on the skin. The urchins, he would reveal, have the defence mechanisms in their body language and, as if, under their skins. The urchins, to him, are the embodiment of chameleon spirit of the megapolis!
Appropriation of a distant research, tactical and critical ways to swallow it and apply to one's practice and revelations of reality that might not sound inductive. Jitish's argument is that post-NGO social observer. It is not community-specific, nor self-rationalising. Be it Malunde of South Africa or the Sadak Chhaps of Mumbai/Delhi, be they unemployed youth of Brazil, Botswana or Bihar, Jitish processes his data vis-a-vis the rarely asked questions, and surpasses the survey
mode to attain an endoscopic understanding.
The multiple images in his earlier works have lessened over time, and Jitish has perhaps learnt the pointedness of an Internet poster : one who posts on a public/group members' message-board on the web. The poster on the web has his/her defined signature and style. Yet, s/he would try and speak a language that might interest others, will invite response and, above all, will employ virtual communication to explore a reality out there, beyond virtual!

-- abhijeet tamhane.