At BAB Kallat presents the sculptural installation Untitled (Two Minutes to Midnight).This large installation draws together two carefully chosen pointers, one from our prehistoric past and the other pointing to a prophesied future. The sculptures reference Palaeolithic hand axes and stone tools that were the first human effort to alter and appropriate the planet. Engraved on the sculptures are numerous clusters of reptilian and mammalian, fish and bird eyes that uncannily return our gaze – a presage of an impending cataclysm. The sculptures are placed on a plinth that echoes the contours of the iconic "Doomsday Clock’, which since 1947 pictures a hypothetical human-made global catastrophe as "midnight”. Since its creation, the clock has annually been set backward and forward 23 times indicating threats from nuclear weapons, climate change, bioterrorism, and other disruptive technologies. During the making of the plinth at BAB, its orientation was accidentally inverted. This unintended and serendipitous, but arguably clairvoyant change, the artist chose to retain in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, its far-reaching consequences and the uncertainty of the on-going pandemic.

Additionally, Kallat also features at BAB a site specific, wallpaper installation titled Integer Studies (Drawing from Life ) comprising 365 drawings, produced daily during the pandemic year of 2021. Contrasting painterly abstraction with precise data, this wallpaper enumerates algorithmically estimated, ever-increasing human population provoking reflections on life and death, on the climate and ecology.

Jitish Kallat, Integer Studies (Drawing from Life), 2021.
Image courtesy of the artist and Bangkok Art Biennale