SUBODH GUPTA
Born in 1964, Subodh Gupta studied at the College of Art, Patna (1983-1988) before moving to New Delhi, where he continues to live and work. Trained as a painter, he went on to experiment with a variety of media and his mature work can be said to begin with his first installation entitled ‘Twenty-nine Mornings’, created during a residency at the Fukuoka Museum of Asian Art in Japan in 1996.
His survey exhibition, ‘The Way Home’, at the Bihar Museum is his first ever solo in Bihar and features twenty major sculptures from the years 2003 to 2024, as well as a small group of paintings. Gupta’s works have been exhibited in solo exhibitions in prestigious museums such as Monnaie de Paris, France (2018); Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, UK (2017); Art Basel, Switzerland (2017), The Smithsonian Museum of Asian Art, USA (2017); National Gallery of Victoria, Australia (2016); Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Germany (2014); Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland (2013); Kiran Nadar Museum, India (2012); Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland (2011). His mid-career survey, curated by Germano Celant, was held at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi in 2012.
Gupta was knighted with the Chevalier dans L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) in 2013 by the Government of France. Other awards he has received include the Emerging Artist Award established by Bose Pacia Modern, New York, USA (1997) and the 1st Prize at the All India Painting Exhibition by M.F. Husain at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, India (1996).
About The Work
Courtesy of Nature Morte, New Delhi
Subodh Gupta is well-known for creating sculptures from a variety of found objects, most famously for using the stainless steel utensils found in kitchens throughout India. With his sculpture entitled “Kingdom of Earth,” Gupta takes the meaning of “found object” into new territories, both literally and figuratively. This monumental work is the meeting of two found objects from very different places and times. Rendered in gleaming stainless steel is a single column and part of the base from an ancient Greek temple (circa 6th-4th Century BC). Grafted to the side of the column is the bone of a dinosaur (the majority of dinosaurs were living during the Mesozoic Era, roughly 252 to 66 million years ago) that has been replicated in fiberglass. Both objects are reproduced in their actual size, emphasizing their reality and authenticity. By bringing together these two objects, one man-made and the other organic, Gupta creates a contemporary art work that confounds our understandings of both the passage of time and the recordings of history.
The sculpture entitled “Cosmic Calm” is a totem of super-sized handis, crafted in a variety of materials: brass, copper, and stainless steel. While the handi is a signature Gupta element he has used in a wide variety of applications, this repetition of simple forms reminds us of the classic Minimalist sculptures by artists such as Donald Judd and Carl Andre, yet Gupta completely Indianizes their language. Appended off of the central totem are a number of real objects which seem to have been chosen for their lack of any specificity to a particular place or time (an umbrella, a tiffin, a broom, a pail). The addition of these common objects to the central sculptural statement nudges the work into the territories of Dada and Pop Art.