Important Notice

In his exploration of globalization and its effects on the local, primarily the emergence of a new Indian middle-class, Subodh Gupta’s main concerns have been subjective value and material production and consumption. In charting and presenting India’s unique developmental path, the artist creatively draws attention to the present interdigitation of tradition and modernity in the country, and the distinct social realities that emerge from this... In his exploration of globalization and its effects on the local, primarily the emergence of a new Indian middle-class, Subodh Gupta’s main concerns have been subjective value and material production and consumption. In charting and presenting India’s unique developmental path, the artist creatively draws attention to the present interdigitation of tradition and modernity in the country, and the distinct social realities that emerge from this interface. In doing so, Gupta effectively communicates the impossibility of capturing the intricacies of the developing world through a developed-world-lens.

Simultaneously, however, the artist pinpoints the rapidly multiplying planes of convergence between the local and the global, the self and the other. In the words of the critic S. Kalidas, through his art, “Subodh Gupta nimbly seeks to stride the trapeze so tenuously stretched between the poco-pomo global and the naïve-kitsch Bihari local with the panache of a mad man, a magician or a prophet” (“Of Capacities and Containment: Poetry and politics in the art of Subodh Gupta”, Subodh Gupta: Gandhi’s Three Monkeys, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, 2008, p. 94).

Using familiar symbols of middle class life in India as his main vehicle in this straddling interrogation, the artist turns everyday kitchens and stores into shimmering theatres of polished stainless steel pots and pans. “For more than ten years, Subodh Gupta has been using the common steel goods of Indian kitchens as one of the primary materials for his art… Outside of India, in the world capitals of New York, London, Paris and Tokyo, where culture is capital and artistic expression is the highest form of entrepreneurship, these steel objects look to be revelatory, as they certainly are in their superb encapsulation of form, function, materiality and economic rationality. Inside of India, these objects may appear as unsophisticated, old-fashioned, awkward and, to many, embarrassing and indicative of the inherited weight of the past (including poverty, the caste system, rampant corruption and a lugubrious Socialist State). The success of Subodh’s sculptures using these objects is not this either/or situation… but that their meaning and reception in either locale emphasizes this crisis of identity India is now experiencing, both for itself and how it is perceived by others” (Peter Nagy, “Subodh Gupta: The Metaphorical Sublime”, START.STOP, Bodhi Art exhibition catalogue, 2007, not paginated).

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