Greetings. As Nature Morte will be taking a few months off from brick-and-mortar exhibitions, we thought we would take this opportunity to look back at the history of the gallery and the development of our relationships with artists, one artist at a time. Now in our 23rd year in India, NM has grown and matured with its artists and our earliest accomplishments are most likely unknown to most of our current audience.

"Private Limited I," October 26–November 24, 1999 at Bose Pacia, New York

Peter Nagy met Jitish Kallat at the opening of his first solo show at Chemould Gallery, Mumbai, in December 1997. Peter had just started Nature Morte in Delhi the month before and fate had him in Mumbai for Jitish's opening and after-party, hosted by Czae Shah. Peter felt an almost visceral attraction to Jitish's work from the start, reminding him of many of the issues and ideas which he had cut his teeth on in NY in the '80s, yet reconfigured in a distinctly Indian idiom. It was Jitish who introduced Peter to the folks at Bose Pacia Gallery in NY, as he had been the runner-up (to Subodh Gupta's first place win) of the first BP Young Artist Award in 1997. In the summer of 1998, BP booked a solo show with JK, aged 24 at the time. JK asked Peter to write the catalog essay, giving Peter the reason to meet them upon his return to NY that summer.

"Rickshawpolis," December 3–24, 2005 at Nature Morte, New Delhi

Versions of the exhibition were presented at Otto Zoo, Milan in June 2006 and at Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney in January 2007.

Jitish's first solo at Nature Morte was designed to be a traveling, three-part show, with photographic works such as Artist Making Local Call exhibited at all venues. Delving deep into the subject of his home town of Mumbai, the exhibition presented a psychedelic vision of snarling traffic, automotive battle scars, flayed denizens, and the organic shape-shifting of a city-run amok. The Rickshawpolis paintings playfully conflated the image of cosmic inflation with that of an ever-expanding cosmopolis.

"Chlorophyll Park," February 4–March 3, 2012 at Nature Morte, New Delhi

Jitish's second solo show with NM presented a more positive version of his home town; an urban oasis that is both real and ideal, a desire to experience the uncanny within the quotidian. The stories Kallat narrates of the city may be contradictory but are also richly realistic: nourishment accompanies fatigue, elegance comes with the unsightly, a spiritual optimism amid material degradation.

"Here After Here (1992–2017)," January 14–March 15, 2017, at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; curated by Catherine David.

Nature Morte was pleased to be deeply involved with Kallat's mid-career survey exhibition. Approximately 100 works were displayed in all mediums: painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, video, and installation; spanning from 1992 (when Kallat was a student at the Sir JJ School of Art in Mumbai) up to 2016 (finished just a few months before the exhibition). This comprehensive exhibition occupied the entire ground floor of the heritage Jaipur House building as well as the gallery for temporary exhibitions in the new wing, constructed in 2009.

"Covering Letter," January 15–28, 2016 at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai (formerly the Prince of Wales Museum).

One of Kallat's most powerful and provocative works, Covering Letter uses a text written by Mahatma Gandhi to Adolf Hitler in 1939, projecting it on to a screen of mist which the viewer can walk through. First presented at the India Art Fair in New Delhi, the work has also been exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gallery Templon in Paris, the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, the India Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and was included in the artist's mid-career survey at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.

The Sculpture Park, Madhavendra Palace, Nahargarh Fort, Jaipur
December 9, 2017–November 9, 2018

Anita Dube, Arlene Shechet, Arman, Asim Waqif, Benitha Perciyal, Bharti Kher, Evan Holloway, Gyan Panchal, Hans Josephsohn, Huma Bhabha, James Brown, Jitish Kallat, LN Tallur, Manish Nai, Matthew Day Jackson, Mrinalini Mukherjee, Prashant Pandey, Ravinder Reddy, Reena Saini Kallat, Stephen Cox, Subodh Gupta, Thukral & Tagra, Vibha Galhotra, Vikram Goyal

Kallat's sculpture, an enlarged copy of a pavement-dweller's kerosene stove decorated with flora and fauna from the facade of the Victoria Terminus in Mumbai, was a perfect fit within the late 19th Century palace, decorated with wall paintings in a bastardized Rajasthani Regency style.

India Art Fair, New Delhi, January 31–February 3, 2019

Jitish Kallat, Bharti Kher, Dayanita Singh, LN Tallur, Asim Waqif, Tanya Goel, Martand Khosla, Gauri Gill & Rajesh Vangad

For IAF, Nature Morte created a separate room within our booth to feature six large paintings from Kallat's latest series, plus some related works on gesso panels. Combining graphic elements from a wide variety of scientific disciplines, the paintings exploit the materials of their rendering to develop fecund surfaces, harking back to Kallat's earliest experiments with paint and reproduction techniques.

"Terranum Nuncius," January 10–21, 2020, at Famous Studios, Mumbai

Nature Morte usually presents one show every winter in Mumbai, converting a voluminous sound stage at the Famous Studios into a gallery space. Kallat responded to the invitation by creating a two-part exhibition. The 60-feet long painting titled Ellipsis was displayed alongside an immersive installation exploring the legacy of the Voyager 1 and 2 space probes, launched by NASA in 1977, in a triptych of a sound piece, a projection, and table with photographic lightboxes.

"Terranum Nuncius," January 28–February 19, 2020, at Bikaner House, New Delhi

Nature Morte hired the gallery and ballroom spaces of Bikaner House to present the Terranum Nuncius exhibition in Delhi at the time of the India Art Fair. This time, each part was given its own room, drastically changing the feel of the works from their presentation in Mumbai.