(Subodh Gupta)
Down here among the mortals a fierce war is being fought. World
has not yet decided which side to take; that of Russia or of Ukraine. But
everyone knows they have to ultimately take a side; and yes, they have more or
less zeroed in on the side of their choice- that of humanity. Forget the
geopolitics, they say. Whatever be the case we want the human beings, and that
too the vulnerable of the lot, be safe and beyond the brutal pain that the wars
are famous for inflicting upon the fleeing. From the safety of elsewhere
warfare, unlike in the yesteryears no longer is exciting like the pyrotechnics
that used to light up the huge flat-screen television sets. The title ‘Cosmic
Battle’ of Subodh Gupta’s latest solo exhibition at the Nature Morte, New Delhi
sounds like an eerie coincidence though the artist has been at it for the last
one decade or so. I mean, bringing the pain of battles and displacements in his
enormous and impressive installations.
‘Cosmic Battle’, the installation that provides the catchy
title to the show is an apt reification for the saying like ‘suspended
animation’. The phrase suggests the contrary meaning though it has the ability
to show something in suspension and also in animation at once, even if the
intention is to underline the frozenness of the situation. The stalemate of a
confrontation may be a distant possibility when it comes to cosmic affairs,
unlike the universal/global affairs like war. The suspension from the ‘dark
nowhere’ is how the cosmos is described, sometimes in the form of a golden egg/Hiranyagarbha
or in the form of a ghata/pot. Noted art historian B.N.Goswami writes in his
essay titled ‘Engaging with Vastness’, “Hiranyagarbha is spoken of as being ‘present
at the beginning’, ‘upholding this earth and heaven’, ‘whose commands all
beings, even the gods, obey’, ‘whose shadow is immortality, whose (shadow also)
is death’.” May be, for the ones who have keen eyes could see in Gupta’s ‘Cosmic
Battle’ the definitional specificities given by Prof.Goswami.
The kinetic slowness imparted to the work through a
mechanism that emulates the impalpable rotation of the earth itself, adds
certain amount of conceptual magnanimity to the moderate size of the sculptural
body (in comparison with the sheer size of the earlier indoor works of Gupta)
and also invites the viewers for a virtual circumambulation around the object
while being stationed at one place of viewing (depending on the entrance to the
space where the work is hung). The unheard music (anhad garje, as said by the
saint poet Kabir) reminds the visitors of the cosmic music generated by the
celestial spheres along their elliptical paths. While the religious philosophy
of the land is affirmative about the conception of cosmos as an Earthen Pot or
as Golden Egg, the battle that takes place could be attributive, reflecting the
contemporary global conflicts that cause the residual humans as refugees and
homeless.
Size does matter when artist superstars are back in the
gallery circuit. The obvious hugeness of Gupta’s works in many ways resembles
the same enormity brought to being in the works of Anish Kapoor. It does not
mean that Gupta imitates Kapoor or vice versa. On the contrary they share a
common world view at least in the creation of aesthetics, that the object-hood
of the works is important, the reflection on their smooth surfaces is an
imperative and invariably the reflections should not correspond to the actual
thoughts that the art should evoke in the minds of the viewers. There is a
physical play between the surface truth of their works and the positioning of
the viewers in front of them. Distortions and displacements caused by the
imperfect reflections goad the viewers to find the meanings beyond the object-nature
of the works. As Althusser puts it, it is not the artist who keeps certain
relationship with the objects that he creates but the objects that make a
relationship with the artist. Going by this view, the (art) objects remain in the
realm of artist’s biography and history so far, establishing constant
connections even if artist wants to detach himself from them and leave them as
independent objects for aesthetic contemplation.
These inextricable knots that the works of art generate in
relation with the artist more or less open up the entry points in Gupta’s two
other works exhibited in the same premises. The objects as a whole do not
create a coherent continuity with the familiar aesthetics of Gupta. Though the
hallmark vessels do establish a Gupta touch in them, the disparity lies in
their organization in this work. A note that accompanies the show says that this
works in fact look like a crashing down of Gupta’s works in the middle of the
gallery and refused to be scavenged out. It could be one of the cruelest of
qualifications that any work of art can get from a gallery introduction.
Notwithstanding the cruelty of the statement there is a methodical madness in
the disembowelment of the virtual pregnancy of Gupta’s vision. The heap thus
generated however does not evoke revulsion but demand a mental engagement with
the components as if it really were a Gupta jigsaw puzzle. In that mental
engagement the continuity is established and the deliberate and accidental quirkiness
of Gupta’s sarcastic and ironic takes on the Indian community practices unravel
itself. The ‘sleepers’, the wooden planks that held the rails in place come as
a visual suggestion or a quotation from the autobiography of the artist, a
further claim of authenticity and continuity, perhaps an assertion that Gupta
needs any more but too close to his heart to resist.
A myth maker as he is Gupta often tells a story around his
works, harking back to the real and imaginary incidents that had colored his
childhood. A keen follower of Gupta’s speeches in various exhibition venues all
over the world, available in YouTube could see how he twists and turns the same
incident into stories suitable to explain his work in question. The
articulation is deliberately patchy, moving beyond the logic of imperfect
English, a language allows any linguistic community a tricky access to his
works and through that he helps his works stand erect like the one you see in
his ‘Torso’, a third work in the exhibition. Torso brings art historical
torsos, Gomateswara of Sravanabelagola, the mutilated torsos of rampant communal
violence and wars near and far, in mind. Also it is a torso in the making or in
the process of abandonment. It is emblematic to the ambitions of a maker,
someone aspires eternity but fails to deliver. Could it be a surreptitious commentary
on the present Indian political leadership that revels in making statues that
are finished physically but never achieved their conceptual completion in the
intellectual sphere? One cannot be sure. Like Kapoor, Gupta cannot hide his
cultural roots in the magnificent nature of sculptures; he has to give a hint
of his socio-cultural belongingness. Or is Gupta a prisoner of his own image
repertoire?
-JohnyML
