Subodh Gupta’s sculptural installations and Rina Banerjee’s stabiles sought their own space, says Uma Nair
Subodh Gupta is known for his unique works that meld the past and the present in their identity and their hybrid contextuality. And this could be seen at the exhibit at Hauser & Wirth, a French gallery, which was from the series titled From the earth, but not of it.
It was an adapted 4-feet terracotta granary jar, (used in the olden days to store pickles and tamarind and dry condiments used for Indian cuisine). It reflected a continuation of Gupta’s use of objects relating to sustenance.
Gupta realised the symbolic transformation of the objects through the attachment of pots, wire and fibreglass — coated in plaster. The modified vessel morphed into an almost figurative form despite its initial familiarity. Clay, made from the earth’s soil, became something that appeared alien, highlighting the presence of the supernatural and cosmic within the everyday idiom of reality and cultural tropes. The vessel became a vehicle of symbolic references.
Inside Out 2017
Galleria Continua had a sculpture by Gupta titled Inside Out, a rivetting work created out of plaster, brass and steel. At first it spoke about negative and positive spaces in terms of the void and the volume. When one looked closer, one could see that it had the embedded impression of two pots that were placed adjacent to each other. These pots were used to store water in homes and were made of brass. Gupta took two humble vessels to transform their very essence into a sculpture of extraordinary alchemy.
The work at once engaged with otherness and ambiguous identities through the evocative use of found materials and objects.
It invited the viewer to consider their subjective responses to self and others. Gupta took the idea from the couplets of the mystic poet Kabir when he took the humble vessel and created metaphors out of it.
As the domestic was superimposed on the artistic, a new aesthetic language was born in which banal earthly objects were brought out into a realm of aristocratic conversations.
Fairy Tale Fantasy
At Basel, Rina Banerjee’s installations were the cynosure of all eyes because they invite you into a world of fantasy.
There were several dense but attenuated installations, creating a fairy tale fantasy almost like the one in Alice in Wonderland. Her work was represented by the French Galleria Nathalie Obadia.
Unpredictable Materials
Art lovers were drawn to Banerjee’s iridescent sculptural installations which created islands of dreamy, exotically coloured features of hybrid animalia and flowers that made us think of birds, beasts and demigods as she explored uncanny fusions of materials and cultures. Her work typically incorporated a wide range of objects and media, including taxidermy alligators, wooden cots, ostrich eggs, light bulbs, umbrellas, saris, pigments, shells, and feathers. Banerjee has called her practice “an examination of diaspora and journeys and specific colonial moments that reinvented place and identity.”
Banerjee presented her sculptures as compositions of hard and soft material. The first was called When signs of origin fade, fall out, if washed away, trickle into separations, precipitate when boiled or filtered to reveal all doubleness as wickedness. Another one was named, Vanishing act that migration, mixation like mothers who hid paternity who could name move me slowly reveal me only when my maker stands straight, 2017.
In this historic creation, she used turtle replica in resin, vintage shell lampshades, steel armature, Polynesian wood mask, Pyrex filtration lab glassware, feathers, thread, linen, silk, amber vials, cowry shells, seed beads and pearls. Her hairy compositions were grotesque, monstrous and chimeric at the same time. These offered us ornamental figures that at once lead us to their metaphorical dimension even as she made deeply feminist commentaries and observations.
Another work was titled Wedding thieves, they stole her away on that blessed day, full that was a day full of frills and ruffles, borders draped,dragged...This surreal sculpture stabile was made of gourd, horn, glass beads, thread, copper crochet copper wire and Murano glass beads.
These works were a synthesis of mythology, religion, anthropology and fairy tales. Banerjee is a a voracious reader with a deeply analytical intuitive intensity which reflects that she is equally informed in both Western cultures as well as Eastern traditions.
Rhetoric Titles
To begin with, her titles were comments in rhetoric stories themselves and she thrived by toying with her titled texts. She brought together steel armature, feathers, fabric, glass beads, thread, dried gourds and silver leafing to create a stunning choreography that kept us guessing about references and relativity.
“I like the sound a text makes when we are mouthing the words,” she stated in an interview. “like colours they can contrast, harmonise, create dissonance, cacophony or stray away from the language being used.”
Speaking on the length of the titles, she added, “We are suspicious of anything lengthy. Minimalism is dominant. I am aware that I speak the English language because I am Indian and that it’s not mine, so I like toying with it, making it bend, stretch, reach. I make my titles to do somersaults, acrobatic feats and create a space that is imprecise.”
Images: Art Basel