Jitish Kallat’s Rain Study (the hour of the day of the month of the season), much like his elemental suite of Wind Studies, participates in the near currents of the atmospheric to summon images that invoke the astronomical. During rain-showers, with the drawing paper held out to the sky Kallat steps outdoors. The drawing thus becomes a rainwater receptacle with constellations of descending raindrops settling on the paper. This short duration of time, measured through the artist’s breath cycles are marked as BC on the drawings.
Once overlaid with a spray of dark pigment and wiped dry, the resultant image invokes galaxy clusters or stellar maps of the distant universe. The graph pattern in these works are hand drawn with aquarelle pencil which the descending raindrops dilute to watercolour marks, simulating constellations. The drawing thus becomes a contemplative instrument that momentarily enters the flows in our localised environment, to exponentially shift orders of magnitude probing ideas of deep space, time, scale and location.