Subodh Gupta’s Anahad/Unstruck: A comeback exhibition after nine years in Mumbai

Subodh Gupta has returned to Mumbai after a nine-year absence with a production that brilliantly combines his politics and evolving aesthetic style. 

Subodh Gupta's most recent solo exhibition, Anahad/Unstruck, is now being held in the renowned Studio Mahalaxmi, which has undergone another transformation into an art venue. The exhibition consists of four paintings and four installations, all of which were erected in two enormous film studios and all of which used different metal components, particularly Gupta's preferred alloy, steel.

However, Gupta's recent explorations with form and structure provide a whole new world to many people in the city acclimated to his characteristic enmeshing of pots, pans, and other steel utensils prevalent in Indian homes. 

"When an artist turns to his own roots and culture, he develops a distinctive style. According to Germano Celant, an art historian and creative director of the Prada Foundation, "His visualisations then produce a potent image." Known as a "uncontrollable, eruptive energy," artist Subodh Gupta organised the Anahad/Unstruck exhibition in Mumbai, which features a larger-than-life art installation. After ten years, he finally performed a solo concert that delved into the ideas and issues of cosmic connections and migration. 

Be prepared to be surprised when you enter a room. Gupta creates works using metal sheets and kitchen items that are accentuated with music and light. The word "anahad," which alludes to the sound of stillness, is a philosophical term that comes from Kabir's poetry and means "unstruck." It transcends geography, time, and human awareness and has no beginning or end. Using this as the main focus, the artist uses commonplace items to reveal a new cosmos. Gupta starts a discussion and a scientific investigation on the relationship between the physical and the spiritual. We left the performance wondering how sound can be created in the absence of sound and how noise may disrupt quiet. 

“Start.Stop”, Gupta's final solo exhibition in the city, which was shown in 2007 in the Kalaghoda location of the former Bodhi Art, played off scale with the white cube gallery space. The "sushi belt" piece gave the appearance of a continually moving metropolis by stacking tiffin boxes on sushi conveyer belts.

It was a striking recollection of an implausible thing due to its size and mobility taken together. This month at Famous Studio, everything seems unlikely, yet in the setting of a movie studio, each piece—whether an installation or a painting—demands to take center stage in your recollections. More importantly, each piece reveals a change in Gupta's political views, creative style, and interests. 

According to Peter Nagy, director of Nature Morte Delhi, the gallery that brought the exhibit to Mumbai, "For me, it's merely a development of Subodh's work." Naturally, Nagy has been familiar with the artist and his work for the past ten years as Gupta's gallerist. And much of what Gupta did throughout those nine years may be viewed here. Finding a place, the artist would fall in love with was one of Nagy's problems, though. After conducting extensive research, Gupta decided on a Famous Studio in August of this year. Nature Morte had previously utilized the venue in 2014 for a group exhibition called The Science of Speed that featured artists Aditya Pande, Asim Waqif, Rajorshi Ghosh, and Vishal Dar.