Studio One of Famous Studio Mahalaxmi has transformed yet again into an art space, this time housing Subodh Gupta’s latest solo, Anahad/Unstruck. The show comprises four paintings and four installations, all featuring various metal components — specifically Gupta’s favoured alloy, steel — installed in two cavernous film studios. However, for many in the city used to Gupta’s trademark enmeshing of pots and pans and other steel utensils found in Indian homes, his current experiments with form and structure offer a whole new world.
Shifting focus
Gupta’s last solo in the city, Start.Stop in 2007, at the erstwhile Bodhi Art’s Kalaghoda space, played off scale against the white cube space of the gallery. The “sushi belt” work, with sushi conveyer belts stacked with tiffin boxes, created the impression of a constantly moving city. The size and motion together made it an impressive memory of an improbable object. At Famous Studio this month, everything is an improbable object, but in the movie studio location, each work, be it installation or painting, demands a starring role in your memories. More importantly, each work shows you a shift in Gupta’s interests, politics and artistic form.
“For me, it’s just a progression of Subodh’s work,” says Peter Nagy, director of Nature Morte Delhi, the gallery that has brought the show to Mumbai. Nagy, of course, as Gupta’s gallerist, has been around the artist and his work for the last decade. And a lot of what Gupta has been up to in that decade can be seen here. But one of Nagy’s challenges was to find a space the artist could fall in love with. After much reconnaissance, in August this year, Gupta settled on Famous Studio, a space Nature Morte used last in 2014 for The Science of Speed, a group show that included artists Aditya Pande, Asim Waqif, Rajorshi Ghosh and Vishal Dar.
Subodh Gupta, Birth of a Star (2016), stainless steel, steel, led light, 120 x 120 x 130 inches.
Comment on our times
“I like unconventional spaces,” Gupta tells us of his decision to use a film studio for his show. “Space is always a challenge, but for me and the nature of my work, this kind of space suits me.” Unconventional spaces definitely suit Gupta. His work at the first Kochi Muziris Biennale, titled What does the vessel contain, that the river will not, challenged the large and otherwise overwhelming room it was given at the biennale’s Aspinwall House venue. We are also reminded that Continua — the gallery Gupta works with in Italy — is a repurposed movie theatre.
Unconventional is certainly a word that describes the space at Famous Studio. The walls are grey, the floors are stripped, the ceiling crisscrossed with lighting catwalks and beams to hold up lights. As you enter the exhibition, you see a large, very tightly lit metal container. As you go closer you notice the container is created of blocks made of pressed and fused kitchen utensils. As you go even closer, you notice there are chinks in the container stuffed with pieces of brightly coloured cloth. Often, a cloth piece will be pulled away to reveal a chink from which an eye looks furtively at the viewer. Then, it’s gone. Rising 11 feet, ‘Aakash, Pataal, Dharti’ can have multiple meanings, but there’s one that really stands out if you’ve been reading the news for the last few years: migration. It’s not a new concern for Gupta, who, hailing from
Bihar has seen and spoken of economic migration within India (and the movements from India to the Gulf and so on). But the form also speaks of refugees, illegal immigrants, and the challenges undertaken to escape an increasingly politically and environmentally unstable world. Thankfully, Gupta does not attempt the conceit of making the viewer to feel like the migrant. Rather, he wants you to feel for the migrant, and think of the impetus for people to travel in extreme conditions — move heavens and earth — in their search of somewhere better to plant roots in. “You put the bird in a cage, or put the bird in a forest. In both places, the bird is the same, the difference is the environment it is in,” Gupta tells us. He’s talking about his work in various spaces, but the thought stays with us as we view this work and remember that underneath our outward differences, we’re all human.
Subodh Gupta, In this vessel lay the seven seas; in it, too, the nine hundred thousand stars (III) (2016), oil paint and digital print on aluminum, LED lights, 144 x 96 x 2 inches.
Channelling anger
For many at the opening, the constant thudding of a chain from the height of the light catwalks harks back to UK-based
art giant Anish Kapoor’s show in the city, in a suburban film studio. The chain is part of a work where it rises and falls into a copper receptacle. But Gupta’s Krodh is different. While Kapoor’s work was timed to the hour where people almost ceremonially gathered at prescribed times, Gupta creates an almost three-minute loop of the chain being picked up by a magnet and then dropped back in with a thud. Gupta last used the chain in his turn set-designing a Bolshoi Ballet performance. The work speaks to Gupta’s increasing frustration with the world, and finds response in that of many others viewing it. A part of you almost wishes the receptacle would shatter, and the rise and fall of the chain stops.
In conversation, Gupta speaks of the numerous political situations that build the feeling of anger and helplessness in a citizen: war, rising fundamentalism, the rise of American President-Elect Trump and of course, homegrown issues such as the answer to end all corruption, demonitisation. It makes you think of the nature of anger, and specifically political anger, in the time of social media. It’s that increasing feeling of exasperation, frustration, helplessness and sometimes all out confusion that many of us feel today.
Subodh Gupta, In this vessel lay the seven seas; in it, too, the nine hundred thousand stars (I) (2016), oil paint and digital print on aluminum, LED lights, 144 x 96 x 2 inches.
Different mediums
Interestingly, the show is full of performance, but for once, it’s mostly the objects on display that are performing. The paintings on aluminium — a series of four titled ‘In this vessel lay the seven seas; in it, too, the nine hundred thousand stars’ (taken from a poem by Kabir), Gupta uses oil paint on digitally printed aluminium sheets installed with LED lights. In these paintings he elevates a simple cooking pan to the cradle of all creation — from looking like the nucleus of a cell, or the imaginings of the big bang, the work speaks to Gupta’s interest in the metaphysical. How does the universe’s constant motion affect us and what lessons do we learn from it? The paintings are also well-made objects, with the technical aspects of digital printing and fitting in the LED done so well, the back of the work is as exciting as its front.
The title of the show comes from a work comprising six steel sheets polished to reflection. Anahad/Unstruck uses a transducer to periodically induce vibration in the six steel sheets till they create a thunderous sound as you stand in a cavernous space with a giant death-star like steel sculpture surrounded by the aforementioned sheets. The sculpture is ‘Birth of a Star’. Made in Korea, the work is a large, polished sphere caught in the midst of binary fission. The split is made clearer by a bright LED light. This scientific ‘performance’ is fascinating. When the steel sheets vibrate, the images of everything reflected distort, and looking at the sculpture amidst this does make you feel like you’re in the centre of creation. It makes for an experience not to be missed.
What is interesting about this exhibition is it uses elaborate gestures and overwhelming sizes, sound and light to recreate what could be really quiet moments in your mind: the formation of an idea, the internal terror of losing a home, to the strength required to search for another, to the knowledge that change requires an unending reservoir of hope. Gupta speaks of artists historically engaging with politics through their art. There’s Picasso’s Guernica, or Goya’s commentary, including the series The Disasters of War, or Gupta’s contemporary, Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar, whose work constantly engages the politics of our times. “I don’t start with the intention of making political art, but somewhere in the process, it gets mixed in,” says Gupta. You cannot deny (socio-political) situations, and as an individual you have to do what you can. And you’ve to do your work, no? So it gets mixed in.”
The author is a freelance writer
Images courtesy: Subodh Gupta Studio and Nature Morte Gallery
