Surreal smithy

In his bungalow in Gurgaon, Subodh Gupta fashions the familiar into art that unsettles

The gates part and we step into Subodh Gupta’s bungalow in Gurgaon. In the garden is a huge mound of metal that looks menacing in the morning light. This is a sculpture in the making. From an assortment of pots, pans, ladles and spoons, Gupta is welding a helmet. On the ground floor is the studio, the bright light streaming in through the glass door and the soft shadows flitting on the staircase leading to the second floor creating an interesting contrast. “There is something about this place which prompts me to think. The moment I step in, it triggers my thought process,” says the artist.

Look around and you see the smithy where the familiar is transformed into the surreal. An Enfield Bullet cast in brass, a rickshaw full of mix-metal lotas from Jaipur, a heap of metal pots stacked in a corner. “Utensils are a medium that all of us can relate to. Steel to me is the most apt representation of the utilitarian aspect of society.”

The rickshaw sculpture is Cheap Rice, a sharp comment on the layers of life in Varanasi. “A rickshaw puller carries the burden of a city loaded with spirituality and all he gets in return is a meager amount, which can’t buy him anything more than cheap rice. The lotas are used to carry the holy water and the brass here is symbolic of the wealthier lot,” says Gupta.
But apart from the metal masses, the studio is bare, almost austere. There are very few chairs or stools to sit on. “I have shoved all my raw material in the four bedrooms upstairs and mainly use the living area,” he says.

In one of the corner tables in the studio, you spot three dummy heads. “That helmet you saw in the garden is being made for one of these faces. To be showcased in March in New York, these heads are like Gandhi’s three monkeys. Only, they have a different connotation. While the head with a military helmet symbolises war, the one covered with a black cloth is the face of terrorism. And the third masked one refers to the increasing impact of global warming,” he says. There you have again, the familiar twisted into the unsettling.