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Lot 11

 

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Working as a stage actor with a travelling theatre company before he turned to the world of fine art, Subodh Gupta has always been drawn to performance and video in addition to painting and sculpture. He explains, “Performance is natural for me. Before my foray into the art world I did theatre. My theatre background is very strong. I like drama, my artwork is drama too…” (rpt. in Anupa Mehta, India 20: Conversations with Contemporary Artists,... Working as a stage actor with a travelling theatre company before he turned to the world of fine art, Subodh Gupta has always been drawn to performance and video in addition to painting and sculpture. He explains, “Performance is natural for me. Before my foray into the art world I did theatre. My theatre background is very strong. I like drama, my artwork is drama too…” (rpt. in Anupa Mehta, India 20: Conversations with Contemporary Artists, Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad, 2007, p. 181). In fact, it was as Gupta was making a poster for one of his theater productions that someone recognized his skill and suggested he enter art school.

In the present lot, a billboard-like photorealist canvas centrally featuring the artist, Gupta resourcefully integrates his twin passions for performance and painting. Rendering a scene from the Bollywood film Haasil directed by his friend Tigmanshu Dhulia, in which he played the two minute cameo role of a petty gangster from his native Bihar, the artist also draws viewers’ attention to the sociopolitical and caste violence that plagues his state and has always been one of his main concerns. Threatening a young man with their pistols, Gupta and two other gang members mirror the frightening percolation of violence down to college campuses in Northern India.

Marrying the worlds of high art and B-grade cinema, Gupta also uses this piece to comment on the violence inherent to his creative process. Titled ‘Let Me Make My Damn Art’, it seems that the cause of the armed dispute in the piece, unlike the movie it is based on, is an interruption of the artist’s work.

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