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拍品專文
Subodh Gupta’s series of hyper-realistic paintings of stainless steel utensils are instantly recognizable, symbolizing both traditional family life and the contradictions of contemporary India. For middle-class Indians, the vessels Gupta paints serve as everyday dishes and cooking utensils, while for those of lower social strata, these objects often hold a unique, aspirational appeal.
Although Gupta’s artistic vocabulary is deeply rooted in the quotidian Indian experience, his post-modernist ideas draw from a range of Western artistic influences as well, including the work of Marcel Duchamp, Josef Beuys, Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol. The artist’s slick, hyper-realist technique recalls that of Northern European painters from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who also used utensils and other objects to represent commerce and prosperity. In Gupta’s works, however, these gleaming utensils evoke a dystopian luxury – a reflection on consumerism and a critique of the fetishization of materialism in today’s globalized world.
Describing his work, the artist remarked, “I steal from the drama of Hindu life. And from the kitchen – these pots, they are like stolen gods, smuggled out of the country. Hindu kitchens are as important as prayer rooms. These pots are like something sacred, part of important rituals, and I buy them in a market. They think I have a shop, and I let them think it. I get them wholesale” (Artist statement, C. Mooney, ‘Subodh Gupta: Idol Thief’, ArtReview, 17 December 2007, p. 57).
Through his sculptural practice and paintings like the present lot, Gupta amplifies and transforms the familiar into something remarkable, challenging viewers to reconsider the significance of the mundane and identify the extraordinary in their own daily lives. During a conversation with the artist, Maxwell Williams noted, “[Subodh Gupta] remains intrinsically tied to his rural past, and as an artist he can’t help but make what would be familiar and normal look beautiful and poignant” (M. Williams, ‘Deep Roots’, Cultured, Miami, February-March 2015, p. 162).
Although Gupta’s artistic vocabulary is deeply rooted in the quotidian Indian experience, his post-modernist ideas draw from a range of Western artistic influences as well, including the work of Marcel Duchamp, Josef Beuys, Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol. The artist’s slick, hyper-realist technique recalls that of Northern European painters from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who also used utensils and other objects to represent commerce and prosperity. In Gupta’s works, however, these gleaming utensils evoke a dystopian luxury – a reflection on consumerism and a critique of the fetishization of materialism in today’s globalized world.
Describing his work, the artist remarked, “I steal from the drama of Hindu life. And from the kitchen – these pots, they are like stolen gods, smuggled out of the country. Hindu kitchens are as important as prayer rooms. These pots are like something sacred, part of important rituals, and I buy them in a market. They think I have a shop, and I let them think it. I get them wholesale” (Artist statement, C. Mooney, ‘Subodh Gupta: Idol Thief’, ArtReview, 17 December 2007, p. 57).
Through his sculptural practice and paintings like the present lot, Gupta amplifies and transforms the familiar into something remarkable, challenging viewers to reconsider the significance of the mundane and identify the extraordinary in their own daily lives. During a conversation with the artist, Maxwell Williams noted, “[Subodh Gupta] remains intrinsically tied to his rural past, and as an artist he can’t help but make what would be familiar and normal look beautiful and poignant” (M. Williams, ‘Deep Roots’, Cultured, Miami, February-March 2015, p. 162).