Swirling Galaxies and Divided Worlds

Hans Carlsson responds to Jitish Kallat's Epicycles and Reena Saini Kallat's Deep Rivers Run Quiet in Sweden.

- Hans Carlsson

Jitish Kallat. A view of Palindrome/Anagram Paintings (2017-18) installed at Epicycles (2021).

Norrtälje konsthall, situated in the town Norrtälje, an hour north of Stockholm by car, presents two parallel exhibitions by Jitish Kallat and Reena Saini Kallat. Reena Saini Kallat is a former residency grant holder at the IASPIS (The International Artists Studio Program in Stockholm) and has taken part in a couple of group exhibitions in Sweden. Jitish Kallat's work, to my knowledge, has never been presented in Sweden before.

The two exhibitions, from the 19th of June to the 26th of September, are rather different both in their formal attributes as well as in the subject matter they deal with. One can, however, find a connection between the two artists' practices in that they deal with questioning divisions of different kinds. In Jitish Kallat's work, these enquiries occur at an abstract philosophical level with works that blur the distinctions between the intimate and the faraway, the constructed and the organic, the rational and the mythological. In Reena Saini Kallat's works, the divisions explored are of geopolitical origin - borders established by nation-states and their overwhelming consequences.