Beschreibung:

Subodh Gupta No. 1 2007 Oil on canvas. 167.8 × 228.5 cm (66 1/5 x 90 in). Signed and dated 'Gupta 07' on reverse.
Provenance Bodhi Art, New Dehli Catalogue Essay Subodh Gupta is without doubt India's most celebrated and widely known contemporary artist. He incorporates in his artistic practice everyday objects that are ubiquitous throughout his native India. Working across an eclectic range of media including sculpture, installation, painting, photography, performance and video, Gupta culls his imagery from such ordinary items as the steel tiffin boxes used by millions to carry their lunch, as well as the thali pans, bicycles and milk pails found in abundance throughout the subcontinent to create an oeuvre which deals resonantly with the economic transformation of India. Largely autobiographical, Gupta's work reflects his memories of a childhood spent learning India's rich and varied cultural traditions and rituals. The result is a dazzling tour de force in which appropriated everyday objects are turned into artistic icons, with their former meanings and functions dissolved. The present lot is a monumental billboard-like hyperrealist canvas in which stainless steel kitchen pots and pans are depicted in extreme close up. With its precise draughtsmanship, the work is a masterful contemporary rendition of that age-old artistic tradition attempted by all great painters, the still life genre. Indeed, in addition to sharing a similar subject matter of domestic-ware, No. 1 is compositionally and tonally suggestive of the Italian modern master Giorgio Morandi Another reference is to the American Pop artist James Rosenquist and his long, horizontal paintings of banal everyday imagery, shown tightly cropped and in extreme close-up. Turning to Gupta's contemporaries, the shimmering of the utensils' highly reflective surfaces gives No. 1 a sumptuous sense of luxury and craft reminiscent of the work of his fellow art world luminaries, Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons What is most fascinating about Gupta's art is that while other South Asian artists ironize or sentimentalize Indian iconography and stereotypes, Gutpa successfully transforms them into recognisable trademarks. If Mondrian owns geometry, Beuys felt and Duchamp urinals, then Gupta owns cow-dung patties, milk buckets, cooking pots tiffin carriers. As the art historian Peter Nagy explains, "Subodh is very good at selecting icons and symbols. There is something of the way Ghandi worked here. Ghandi used the very simple elements of salt or homespun cotton to overturn a colonial empire. Subodh uses pots, bicycles and milk pails to talk about the great changes occurring in India today." Read More