Super Boy Proceed Slowly

Jitish Kallat resurrects the strewn debris of mass media, piecing together old photographs, faxes and photocopies to create a visual collage from which he paints his canvases. Splashing words like truncated slogans across his paintings, Kallat exposes the idiosyncrasies of mechanical reproduction by revealing the grainy resolutions and cropped compositions of his news clippings and internet printouts. Following the aesthetic sensibilities of Pop Art, Kallat has collapsed the picture plane giving his viewer no refuge from his images of child laborers, urchins and street waifs. His subaltern subject matter, flickers between the genial imagery of the everyday billboard and the violence of the agit-prop posters as it confronts its audience. Kallat's cities and subjects are constantly under attack and he addresses the current war-torn political climate not only in his subject matter but in his technique. Blasting away at the surface of his paintings, Kallat ages these recent works suggesting the destruction that warfare has wreaked on cities and people.