Food for thought

In his first exhibition in Bangalore, Subodh Gupta returns to his themes of food and everyday household items, expressed through a new series of works

It would appear to be rather momentous, the unveiling of Subodh Gupta's first solo exhibition in Bangalore (or, to extend that, his first in South India, as artist and Karnataka Chitrakala Parishad faculty member TMV Gowda points out). Gupta, who has been showered with various encomiums for his work, from both enfant terrible and poster boy of Indian contemporary art to India's Marcel Duchamp, has exhibited at the most famous venues abroad and coming down to crass commerce, was the youngest Indian artist to sell a work for over $1 million. But despite this reputation, the ambience at GALLERYSKE in Bangalore the evening of the preview is relaxed. Gupta himself appears at ease, talking to invitees, with artist and wife Bharti Kher beside him.

His latest exhibition, titled "Recent Works" that will be on display at GALLERYSKE till December 7, continues with his signature themes. The everyday steel vessels that have come to be identified as one of the idioms of the 49-year-old's art are present in the form of a giant chandelier of milk pails, buckets and tiffin carriers of various sizes, and tube lights. Titled "Aura", this is also the largest installation at the exhibition. Then there are the miniatures. "Thoughts" offers a macabre helping of a silver spoon full of tiny bronze and metal skulls, while "Swallow everything whole" has a silver spoon of concrete, resting on a marble slab. In his note for the show, Gupta says the miniatures "...are like the couplets or dohas that are inserted within larger narratives. They are a space within a space, specially bracketed areas inside the greater corpus of my work."

There is an autobiographical element to the show, with Gupta's "Note to Self", a series of evocative oil paintings of remnants of meals he has partaken of, on different occasions, around the world. Created in the form of a visual journal, the paintings chronicle his "journey through food". The series is reminiscent of earlier works like "Full Moon", the 2011 oil on canvas with an empty plate and traces of leftovers, hung at his exhibition at Hauser & Wirth.

Gupta's relationship with the kitchen and food goes back a long way - in his "Spirit Eaters" at Khoj, for example, he brought three "Kanthababas", part of a community that eats for a living, to shovel away piles of food in minutes before an audience. "My work has somehow been related to food, and I want to stay on that same path," says Gupta, on the phone from Delhi, where he had returned to the day after the preview.

It is also a path he will be continuing on at his upcoming show at Performa 13, the well-known performance biennale in New York later this month. There, Gupta's performance "Celebration" will explore the idea of feasting. Each night, the artist will prepare and host a meal for visitors. "India has a culture of feeding people in many ways - either in celebration, or death, or as part of a religious ritual, such as langars. I'm trying to express that culture through different forms of art," he says.

Gupta's magnum opus, though, would be the show coming up at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi in January. "It's one of my most comprehensive shows, and one of the most important as well. I'm bringing together the most important works I've done, borrowing from collectors abroad and galleries, as well as works from my studio," he says. Titled "Everything is inside", the exhibition is being curated by Germano Celant - well known critic, art historian and senior curator at the Guggenheim.

On his superstar status in the contemporary art world, he says: "I lead a very normal life. I go to work and buy my fruit and vegetables myself. And I keep an eye out for things that I can express through my art."