Subodh Gupta

Jack Shaiman Gallery, New York
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is deeper and richer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are surface irregularities in places, inherent to the medium and to the artist’s working process. The small indentation to the lowest vessel is original to the work and inherent to the artist’s choice of medium.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist




Widely regarded as India's most influential Contemporary artist, Subodh Gupta's varied sculptural practice brings together the languages of Western and Eastern art to communicate the artist's own experiences of living in India and his perception of the rapid cultural, social and economic changes underway there and as well as further afield. In Untitled Gupta confronts the viewer with a monumental sculptural installation created from a tower of traditional Indian copper cooking vessels stacked one on top of the other. This visually arresting and dynamic manipulation of an everyday, utilitarian object references numerous sculptural precedents, ranging from the metaphorical and Conceptual principles of Marcel Duchamp's readymade sculptures, to Minimalism's investigations into an object's purity of form and its materiality, to the dynamic vertical repetition of Constantin Brancusi's La colonne sans fin.

Always keenly aware of his chosen objects' physical presence and the aesthetic and symbolic attributes of their materials, the lowly copper cooking vessel in Gupta's world becomes a metaphor for the upwardly mobile aspirations of India's newly wealthy middle classes as much as a reminder of the daily poverty hanging over the country's rapidly expanding urban population. His choice of the traditional copper cooking vessels as opposed to their cheaper, more readily available stainless-steel counterparts has added symbolic connotations too; specifically of the rapidly changing cultural values in Indian society and the way in which modern techniques and mass-produced products are frequently usurping the country's traditional practices and objects. Divorced from their original quotidian function and presented here as if sentimental relics of the "old" way of life, Gupta endows the now obsolete traditional copper cooking pots with a more profoundly decorative function that in turn raises questions regarding notions of cultural inheritance and the concept of progress in the ever-changing global society. As Gupta says: "All these things were part of the way I grew up. They are used in the rituals and ceremonies that were party of my childhood. Indians either remember them from their youth, or they want to remember them."