Important Notice

Lot 71

 

Quick Zoom

Foregrounding the significance of outliers and departures from the flattening norms of globalization, Subodh Gupta's work values the role and responsibilities of the local within the ascendant global matrix. In reclaiming the politics of place amid the homogenizing convergences of globalization, the artist's striking images and constructions reveal the “multiple seething growing reality” from which Gupta's body of work has emerged, and in which... Foregrounding the significance of outliers and departures from the flattening norms of globalization, Subodh Gupta's work values the role and responsibilities of the local within the ascendant global matrix. In reclaiming the politics of place amid the homogenizing convergences of globalization, the artist's striking images and constructions reveal the “multiple seething growing reality” from which Gupta's body of work has emerged, and in which it continues to thrive in (Nicolas Bourriaud, “On Cultural Precarity: A Letter to Subodh Gupta”, Subodh Gupta, Jack Shainman Gallery, 2008, p. 3).

Reflecting on the nuances of stainless steel, and the consequences of Gupta's adoption of the alloy and its images in his work, Peter Nagy says, “Steel is its own strange doppelganger. Polished it acts as a mirror, tarnished it is opaque. It can be both weapon (sword) and protector (shield), Resistance and Establishment. Piled into accumulations as Subodh treats it, it is coinage and currency, the glittering allure but also the solidity of capital in its most primal form…Used for a work of art, it communicates a seductive pleasure but also a bankable dependability. To transplant it from the corner of a mud hut in rural Bihar to the top floor of a glamorous art gallery in Bombay questions how any society constructs the meaning and value of anything, how context determines content, and how geography is in fact destiny” (“Subodh Gupta: The Metaphorical Sublime”, Start.Stop, Bodhi Art exhibition catalogue, 2005, unpaginated).

In the present lot, Gupta presents his viewer with a theater of polished pans, milk pails and other shiny, new stainless steel kitchen utensils hanging from lines of rope strung across a store front. Injecting a dose of glamour into the commonplace, the artist gently chides his viewers about the effervescence of appearance and their desires, and, by extension, about the ephemeral nature of consumption as well.

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site