Born in Patna and settled in Delhi, Subodh Gupta’s body of work includes sculptures, installations, paintings, photography, performance and video. His latest solo exhibition ‘Recent Works’ is on at Gallery Ske, Langford Town until December 7. “It is a collection of my most recent works. In India, this is the first show of my small works and I’m quite excited about it. The poetry of doing something so small, personal and valuable to me; it’s quite a beautiful experience,” says Gupta.
Comprising an installation, a few paintings and small sculptures, all his works have food as their theme, whether it’s the installation of shiny, bright utensils forming a chandelier ‘Aura’, the little sculptures of spoons or the paintings depicting meals that he’s shared with people across continents. “I have never been much of a reader but I like poetry because I feel that it opens up the world. For me, the miniatures in the show - the stainless kitchen cabinet, a spoon with cement, and the other spoon skulls cast in bronze - these small pieces are like the couplets or dohas that are inserted within larger narratives. They are space within a space, specially bracketed areas inside the greater corpus of my work,” explains Gupta.
He started painting at age ten. “I started by copying calendars. Every middle class family has a visual reference to art through calendar art. If you’re born in a Hindu family, you’ll see Ram, Sita, Krishna; if you’re Muslim, you’ll have Mecca or Medina; and if you’re Christian, there’s Jesus, Mary, etc. So that’s what I started copying and that’s how I started painting,” he laughs.