Sightings D19M12Y2015

2015
7-part lenticular photopiece
27 x 128 in./ 68 x 324 cm.

Sightings are a suite of lenticular prints that play with scale and colour to unveil telescopic snapshots of distant cosmic phenomena on close-up views of fruit surfaces. Each of the lenticular prints integrates images of the skin of common fruits as our eyes perceive it, with its chromatic opposite—an image made up of the colours that the fruit surface absorbs and which are invisible to the human eye. As a viewer changes her position with respect to the photo-piece, these double images begin to flip, revealing their opposites. What at first seemed like an image of a distant constellation or a supernova explosion is revealed to be the skin of an orange or a peach and vice versa. The galactic and terrestrial merge and a spectacular ‘sighting’ of the cosmos is made possible within the mundane, inviting the viewer to speculate on the unity of all matter in the Universe; from the microscopic to the cosmic, all animated by the same stellar energy. The cryptic code in the title denotes the day, month and year when the artist walked to the Pali Naka market near his home in Mumbai to buy these fruits.