Subodh Gupta: Cosmic Battle

Cosmic Battle by Subodh Gupta
On view till 10 April 2022.

Nature Morte is pleased to announce the exhibition of a major installation by Subodh Gupta.

Created in 2018, “Cosmic Battle” is the premiere showing of a major new work by Subodh Gupta which expands his sculptural language into a total environment. Suspended from the ceiling, just grazing the floor, will be a large semi-sphere which revolves slowly, presenting itself to the viewer in multiple guises. The work interacts with the space around it to be physically commanding, overwhelming in dimensions and materiality, but also ephemeral and elusive due to its reflective surfaces, enveloping darkness, and hypnotic rotation. What the viewer makes of this other-worldly presence will depend on the personal encounter of the work on its infinite cycle of revolutions. How each viewer perceives the object in space, how their eyes adjust to light and opacity inside the work. The presence is both celestial and yet intimately human, timeless and quotidian, excessive and agile.

Alongside the installation, in the gallery’s side room, will be a new work Entitled “Self-Portrait”, 2022. This work is a foil perhaps to the floating apparition in the main gallery. It is as if a number of Gupta sculptures have crash-landed to earth, their parts haphazardly disheveled and battered, their refuse ready to be plundered by scavengers.

A third work, entitled “Torso” and recently created, joins the ensemble. A figure is found to be in a state of decomposition, classical in stature, yet vulnerable to nature that is beginning to colonize its form. The self-cast torso in bronze stands anchored to a plinth made from the same railway tracks from his hometown. Together, this triptych of works reveals Gupta’s interests in the passage of time, the experience of the self in relation to the body and its material language thus continuing the connections between the artist's inner life and the works he creates.