Mumbai-based artist Jitish Kallat's large scale sculpture "Here After Here After Here" in set to be unveiled in Austria as part of a permanent public artwork display, according to his gallerists.
Kallat was among three artists invited for a project conceived in 2012, when a regional consortium of 10 municipalities approached the Advisory Council of Public Art Lower Austria, for large-scale public artworks to be installed on three traffic roundabouts in Lower Austria.
The artist, who is among the leading contemporary artists in India, chose the site at Stockerau, 20 kilometers north of Vienna, where the roundabout acts as a key point acting as a gateway to several towns.
His six-metre tall and 17 m in diameter 'unending' sculpture, "Here After Here After Here," created in a "traffic blue" shade that appears like a a mammoth loop of infinitely stretched traffic signage, is set to be unveiled on October 11.
Kallat draws together a confluence of myriad references, amongst them the mythic symbol of ouroboros, ancient eternal knots, alchemical diagrams and sacred geometry for the artwork that is set in TERN (Trans European Road Network) font.
The text and symbols on the highway signage connect Stockerau to places all over the world ranging from Singapore to Salvador, Marrakesh, Mumbai, Beijing, Brasilia, Bucharest to New York, Paris and Taipei, among others.
The text bears actual distances and exit signs, that one might follow from Stockerau to reach any of these places
"Somehow more than revisiting the many photographs and videos I made at the roundabout while I was there, I was drawn to repeatedly view the site via Google Earth, as if to make sense of the place from above and afar..." Kallat said in a statement.
The artist who served as the curator and artistic director of the 2014 edition of Kochi Muziris Biennale (KMB) has had solo exhibitions at museums include institutions such as the Art Institute of Chicago, Bhau Daji Lad Museum (Mumbai), the Ian Potter Museum of Art (Melbourne) and the San Jose Museum of Art (San Francisco).
His work "Public notice 2" recently ended after a five month run at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney and his exhibition "Public Notice 3" was exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago for a year.
