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Lot Essay
"Culturally specific, the cups, thali pans, and tiffins underscore difference [...] But the objects also have universal resonances. Domestic tools tied to the preparation of food inevitably brings into play the tension between accumulation and deprivation, a dichotomy certainly relevant to contemporary India [...] but one that is also meaningful around the globe." (I. Panicelli, Art Forum, New York, September 2011, p. 345)
Familiar to both the rural and urban echelons of Indian society, these stainless steel containers are a ubiquitous element in the trousseau of newly married women and a staple of many Indian homes.
Using these icons of Indian culture, Gupta explores the innate dichotomies of traditional and modern, rural and urban, wealthy and the impoverished. With his uncanny ability to identify these icons the artist addresses the existing social ills of discrimination, religious tensions, industrialization and globalization. In his paintings, sculptures, as well as installations, Gupta employs these stainless steel implements as a kind of Duchampian style ready-made, piling them into the shape of temples, hanging them precariously from the ceiling and, in the spirit of Claes Oldenburg, magnifying a single pail to mammoth proportions.
Predominantly, however, these quotidian vessels are used by middle-class Indians as dishes and cooking implements in place of the porcelain or glassware brought out for guests and special occasions. The vessels are also aspirational objects of desire for the under-classes. Gupta is particularly sensitive to this societal stratum as Bihar, his home province, is associated with backwardness and lawlessness.
"Superficially, Subodh's art has taken the experience of India away from the dirty, crowded and noisy to the clean, sparse and sedate. While he has done so metaphorically, his choice of icons and materials and his strategy of approach have been anything but simplistic [...] paintings of the lustrous surfaces of steel pots that bleed from their own making: marvelous symbols that both catch and repel meanings, slipping in and out of focus. A metaphor literally takes form, casting one subject as a substitute for another. Sculpture and painting which employ recognizable imagery make concrete the pervasiveness of metaphors in our thoughts, not only as tropes of language." (P. Nagy, Start.Stop, exhibition catalogue, Mumbai, March 2007).
Several of Gupta's most seminal works are currently being shown in an important mid-career retrospective at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. See lot 253 for further discussion of Gupta's work.
Familiar to both the rural and urban echelons of Indian society, these stainless steel containers are a ubiquitous element in the trousseau of newly married women and a staple of many Indian homes.
Using these icons of Indian culture, Gupta explores the innate dichotomies of traditional and modern, rural and urban, wealthy and the impoverished. With his uncanny ability to identify these icons the artist addresses the existing social ills of discrimination, religious tensions, industrialization and globalization. In his paintings, sculptures, as well as installations, Gupta employs these stainless steel implements as a kind of Duchampian style ready-made, piling them into the shape of temples, hanging them precariously from the ceiling and, in the spirit of Claes Oldenburg, magnifying a single pail to mammoth proportions.
Predominantly, however, these quotidian vessels are used by middle-class Indians as dishes and cooking implements in place of the porcelain or glassware brought out for guests and special occasions. The vessels are also aspirational objects of desire for the under-classes. Gupta is particularly sensitive to this societal stratum as Bihar, his home province, is associated with backwardness and lawlessness.
"Superficially, Subodh's art has taken the experience of India away from the dirty, crowded and noisy to the clean, sparse and sedate. While he has done so metaphorically, his choice of icons and materials and his strategy of approach have been anything but simplistic [...] paintings of the lustrous surfaces of steel pots that bleed from their own making: marvelous symbols that both catch and repel meanings, slipping in and out of focus. A metaphor literally takes form, casting one subject as a substitute for another. Sculpture and painting which employ recognizable imagery make concrete the pervasiveness of metaphors in our thoughts, not only as tropes of language." (P. Nagy, Start.Stop, exhibition catalogue, Mumbai, March 2007).
Several of Gupta's most seminal works are currently being shown in an important mid-career retrospective at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. See lot 253 for further discussion of Gupta's work.