MMK 1 Subodh Gupta: Everything is Inside

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1 Press release, 9 September 2014 MMK 1 Subodh Gupta: Everything is Inside Subodh Gupta attained international fame with his large-scale installations of shiny stainless steel vessels and his sculptures consisting of countless worn-out dishes and other items of everyday use in India. The MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst is now staging the artist s most extensive solo presentation in Europe to date Everything Is Inside (12 September January 2015) with sculptures, paintings, videos and performative works from all phases of his career. Gupta has moreover developed two large installations and a performative work especially for the show at the MMK. The survey builds on a retrospective presented last year at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. Subodh Gupta s works mirror the current situation in India a society shaped in good part by the major transformation processes brought about by the rapid economic upswing of the past decades. At the same time, daily life in India is still determined as strongly as ever by traditional values, spirituality and religious belief. Gupta explores these various developments with the aid of supposedly banal everyday objects. Yet the materials he uses for his works not only bear a relation to sociopolitical aspects but are also deeply linked to his personal biography from his childhood in a small town in north-eastern India to his personal and professional development in New Delhi, and finally his career as an internationally successful and globally active artist. Materials such as cow dung, loam, jute, bronze, marble and stainless steel are charged with meanings that go back to the artist s own familial, personal and spiritual experiences and values. Subodh Gupta is one of India's most prominent artists: he paints a multifaceted picture of that country by capturing the life there with references to the Indian past and international present. He shows us an everyday reality shaped on the one hand by processes of globalization and modernization, and on the other hand by tradition and religion. His work revolves around issues that put the local in a global context and direct the focus to universal values and symbols, observes MMK director Dr Susanne Gaensheimer. The visitor is greeted in the central hall of the MMK 1 with the installation This Is Not a Fountain ( ), made of worn-out commonplace dishes collected by the artist over many years. In a number of places, simple water taps stick up from within this mound of plates and pots and water them. On the one hand, Gupta is interested in the uniform character of the dishes, which are mass produced in standardized forms. On the other hand, his concern is with the individual traces that have inscribed themselves in the tableware and point to daily use over a long period of time.

2 Utilitarian objects also play a leading role in Pure (I) (1999/2014). This work consists of a loam floor with objects embedded in it a restaging of a performative sculptural work that first took place in 1999 on the outskirts of Delhi. At the time, Gupta asked the residents of the surrounding villages to entrust him with utilitarian household objects that held special meaning for them. On a field, he had a mixture of cow dung and loam spread out over a rectangular area. In the Hindu faith, cow dung is believed to possess cleansing powers. The method of treating the land with a mixture of cow dung and loam is still in use in rural regions today, as a way of distinguishing the domestic area from land used for farming or livestock breeding. After applying the mixture, Gupta processed the rectangular area sculpturally by removing material and digging out forms made to fit the objects he had collected. This early work marks the beginning of Gupta s exploration of everyday objects as symbols of culture-specific phenomena. On the occasion of the exhibition Everything Is Inside at the MMK, Pure (I) is being restaged for the first time using the very objects Gupta originally collected and embedded in the soil. For Date by Date, Subodh Gupta took the furnishings of an administration office in India complete with chairs, tables, cabinets, files and ventilators and assembled them in a room installation. The work has its origins in the artist s personal experience: Whenever I went to court to do some registry for my land, I d be really shocked by the way the people worked. It s like a whole hall full of offices, and everybody is locking their benches and tables and chairs with chains so that they are not taken away. It was so bizarre to see. But on a Sunday, with no people there, when I saw those chairs and chains, I was so moved that I had to do something with what I saw and felt. In the work Season (2013), Gupta unites the present and the past. The mango - the national fruit of India - is an object omnipresent in everyday life in India. Season presents deceptively real-looking bronze replicas of this fruit lying on the table of an old sewing machine. During harvesting season, mangos are spread out on every surface in a household including the sewing machine to ripen. The mango fruit is highly symbolic in Buddhism and Hinduism alike. According to one of the countless legends revolving around this fruit, for example, Buddha attained enlightenment under a mango tree. Here Gupta combines the mango with the symbolism of the sewing machine which, as a relic of the British colonial era alludes to the country s history, while on the other hand representing the importance of the Indian textile industry in the world market. A great number of the works allude to the themes of cooking and eating, which for Gupta are manifestations of everyday cultural practice but also symbols of essentiality and existence. These concerns are also reflected in his performative works. For several years, the artist has been photographing the remains of his meals whether food he has cooked at home or food he has ordered in restaurants in India or abroad. He has already documented several hundred meals in this way. He has now brought a number of these photographs together as wallpaper. Once a month, the exhibition room displaying this wallpaper will be transformed into a kitchen in which the visitors are served food traditionally cooked in India on Saturdays. Saturday is the day of the week dedicated to the planet Saturn, which in Vedic astrology (a form of astrology closely associated with Hinduism) is governed by the god Shani, Lord of Karma. Shani is the most powerful and most dreaded planet god, who can be

appeased, however, with certain foods. Originally religious in nature, this ritual has become part of ordinary secular practice in modern-day India.

Catalogue The presentation is being accompanied by a monograph in English edited by Aveek Seen and Susanne Gaensheimer.

3 appeased, however, with certain foods. Originally religious in nature, this ritual has become part of ordinary secular practice in modern-day India. During the exhibition, a dish traditionally eaten in India on Saturdays will be cooked for the visitors on five Saturdays. Catalogue The presentation is being accompanied by a monograph in English edited by Aveek Seen and Susanne Gaensheimer. With contributions by Germano Celant, Bharti Kher, Sunil Khilnani, Raqs Media Collective and Aveek Seen, 294 pages, published by Penguin Books India. 48 EUR Opening: Thursday, 11 September, 7 pm The exhibition Subodh Gupta: Everything Is Inside is being carried out with support from:

4 Accompanying events MMK Talks with Subodh Gupta and Germano Celant Friday, 12 September 2014 In the fifth round of MMK Talks, the MMK is continuing the popular conversation series The Artists with a dialogue between Subodh Gupta and Germano Celant. Germano Celant, an art historian and theorist of international renown, coined the art-historically significant term Arte Povera. Taking an artists movement of 1960s and 70s Italy as its point of departure, the term describes installation works consisting of poor i.e. commonplace and everyday as well as organic materials, for example soil, broken glass, wood and string. In addition to his multifarious activities as a critic and author, Celant has curated a large number of exhibitions all over the world. In 1995, for instance, he acted as director of the Fondazione Prada in Milan, from 1989 to 2008 he was senior curator of contemporary art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and in 1997 he curated the main exhibition of the 47th International Art Exhibition Biennale di Venezia. Gupta and Celant have been cultivating intensive professional exchange for many years. Celant curated the largest survey on Subodh Gupta to date, which took place early this year at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. Livestream broadcast: The MMK Talk will be streamed live on the MMK website ( The talks are conducted in English. Admission is free of charge. Tracing Khichdi: Cooking performances in the exhibition Once a month, under the artist s direction, food traditionally cooked in India on Saturdays will be prepared for the visitors. Saturday is the day of the week dedicated to the planet Saturn, which in Vedic astrology (a form of astrology closely associated with Hinduism) is governed by the god Shani, Lord of Karma. Shani is the most powerful and most dreaded planet god, who can be appeased, however, with certain foods. Originally religious in nature, this ritual has become part of ordinary secular practice in modern-day India. The event is taking place in cooperation with Club Michel e.v. The meal is included in the admission fee. Dates: On the following Saturdays from 4-6 pm 13 September 2014; the artist will be present Further dates: 4 October 2014, 1 November 2014, 6 December 2014, 17 January 2015

5 Preview MMK NOW Dayanita Singh: Go Away Closer at the MMK 3 (Domstrasse 3) Opening: Friday, 26 September 2014, 7 pm Press conference: Friday, 26 September 2014, 11 am Boom She Boom: Works from the MMK Collection at the new MMK 2 (Taunustor 1) Opening: Sunday, 19 October, 2-6 pm Press conference: Thursday, 16 October 2014, 11 am Press photos: Press photos are available for downloading on our Internet site at Press department: Christina Henneke Telephone Daniela Denninger Telephone Julia Haecker Telephone Fax presse.mmk@stadt-frankfurt.de

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