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Lot 98

 

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Subodh Gupta frequently turns to the polished steel pots and pans familiar in kitchens across India, as a springboard in his artistic exploration of universal issues including development, urbanization, cycles of production and consumption, and global convergences. These vessels, interpreted very differently on local and international platforms, become "emblematic of the collision of worlds brought on by globalization"; and the monumental... Subodh Gupta frequently turns to the polished steel pots and pans familiar in kitchens across India, as a springboard in his artistic exploration of universal issues including development, urbanization, cycles of production and consumption, and global convergences. These vessels, interpreted very differently on local and international platforms, become "emblematic of the collision of worlds brought on by globalization"; and the monumental installations and canvases that the artist creates with them reveal the 'cultural precariousness' that is inherent in the "global switching of the ever faster revolution of signs and objects… By accepting the precarious [Gupta's] work engages the political context of the moment and probes what's ethically at stake in the field of production" (Nicolas Bourriaud, "On Cultural Precarity: A Letter to Subodh Gupta", Subodh Gupta, Jack Shainman Gallery, 2008, p. 7).

In the present lot, instead of his familiar close-ups of shiny stainless steel pots and buckets, Gupta presents the viewer with the image of a dilapidated interior of an old shop. A pile of battered brass pots is carefully stacked on a loft along with an old cardboard carton, and an ancient 'taraju' or weighing scale hangs from one of the wooden ceiling beams. Perhaps the shop of a second-hand metal merchant, this interior speaks of age and wear; each vessel is dull and dented, scrap metal that is now only worth its weight, and the paint crackles off the walls and ceiling.

In moving away from the hi-gloss sheen of his more familiar utensil paintings, the artist reminds his viewers of the effervescence of appearance and desire, and, by extension, of the transitory nature of consumerism and subjective value as well. After all, in the ultimate analysis, a vessel is but an empty container; a simple conceit whose value is ironically contingent upon what it is filled with.

Reclaiming the politics of place in the midst of the homogenizing convergences of globalization, this "striking image" also reveals the "multiple seething growing reality", at once modern and traditional, urbane and naive, from which Gupta's body of work has emerged (Ibid., p. 3).

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