Simplicity and elegance mirror the language of India’s greatest installation artist Subodh Gupta, says Uma Nair
When the President of France announces that he will visit an artist’s studio and the artist is Subodh Gupta, you know that his name is one that registers on an international reckoning. Over the past 15 years, Gupta has worked hard to build his own reputation and repertoire of works that cut across cultures and speaks to people everywhere. Galleries with an international name and lineage become his dealers and it is not surprising that his installation at Art Basel Hong Kong 2018 will be Arario Gallery.
Easily recognised by his use of everyday objects, the artist is one of India’s leading contemporary artists. Not limiting himself to just one medium, he has expressed his ideas through multiple mediums such as painting, sculptures and installations. The focal point of most of his work, however, has remained in the extraordinary use of banal everyday objects.
President Macron visited Subodh Gupta’s studio on Sunday March 11. Nestled in the colony of Gurugram facing a car showroom, the tall heavy gate must be opened for you to enter.
With Gupta’s sprawling studio-workshop in Gurgaon, he is very much the master of his three-storeyed enterprise. One of his large vessel installations frame the front lawn; inside, scale models of older works take up corners– you can see a steel bucket with kitchen spoons. Gupta has designed the avant-garde exposed concrete and glass exterior of the building himself. Inside, it gives way to wood-panelled luxury and statement furniture that blends pragmatism and eloquent elegance.
His studio is built and spread over three floors. A medium-sized room with neon light alphabets Ma ki Daal on the wall and another of his vessel installations on the wall tell you that he is an artist who thinks and brings the past forward to the present. Simplicity and elegance emanate the language of India’s greatest installation artist. The table on this floor has a glass and thali sunken into its circular surface. On the ground floor is where all the welding and the construction happens.
A small staircase leads you on to the larger space and a lift takes you up to the middle floor. Gupta greets you and takes you towards his works that he has just created. “I try to keep this floor as clean as possible — it’s where I put the work when I want to look at it in detail and see what I might do, or when it’s completed,” says Subodh.You can see a cabinet with his bronze mangoes, a stunning surreal work that evokes questions among the viewers and gets you thinking about stories.
Subodh takes you into his office and painting studio, which of course is spacious and spotless. A high backed chair with purple upholstery is where he sits and thinks. An antique Ganesha in its residual imperfect state makes you think of his love for antiquity and his brilliance at thinking out of the box.The square table at the centre is packed with books. The studio has the air of a mini museum. A table with some of his potent vessel series, another with paint tubes and brushes — each corner is evocative.
At Gupta’s studio, you can have freshly brewed Italian coffee/masala chai. He doesn’t often give interviews. I am indebted to Peter Nagy for having processed mine. In 2016 just before his show in Mumbai he told me , “I employ a welder, a clay modeller, a plaster cast painter and a graphic designer along with a studio assistant who has good command over languages, both Hindi and English and can write well. Most days, I like to be able to offer my assistants something for lunch, so I order tiffin [a packed hot lunch of rice, dal, curry, bread, and so on, delivered by a tiffin-wallah], and we sit down and eat together for an hour around 2 pm.”
It would be intriguing to know the conversation that French President Macron had with Gupta. Of course, this is a meeting of two empires —French soaked in the history of Camus and Sartre while India is soaked in ancient texts of the puranas with Munshi Premchand and Tagore and many more thrown in. All in all, a great moment for contemporary Indian art.