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April 24, New York - Bose Pacia Modern gallery presents an exhibition of New Delhi artist
Subodh Gupta entitled
"Twenty-nine Mornings: Subodh Gupta - Recent Paintings and Installation". The show will run from May 22 through June 26. The gallery is located at 580 Broadway, 2nd floor, in SoHo. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 12-6 p.m. and by appointment. A reception with the artist will be held on Thursday, May 22 from 5-8 p.m.
The gallery is proud to announce Subodh Gupta as the winner of its first annual emerging artist of India award. Encouraged by the increasing attention being paid to India's twentieth century master painters as well as to its important contemporary artists, Bose Pacia Modern felt it was critical to begin introducing emerging new talent from India to the international art community. In addition, the gallery wanted to provide an opportunity for an emerging Indian artist to interact with the international art scene in New York during the early and formative stages of his career.
The gallery announced the competition throughout India by notifying artists, art centers, and public media. An overwhelming number of applications were received from the largest urban centers of India to its most remote, rural settings. The entries were judged by an illustrious panel of jurors consisting of Vidya Dehejia, Curator, Indian and Southeast Asian Art, The Smithsonian Institution; Vishakha Desai, Director, The Galleries at the Asia Society; Thomas McEvilley, Independent Art Critic; Carlton Rochelle, Jr., Director, Asian Art, Sotheby's.
On exhibit are a collection of recent paintings and installation by Subodh Gupta. The artist's work centers around references to traditional and contemporary iconography. His ideas take form in a series of works on small wooden stools called "Pirhas". Pirhas are used throughout India as part of daily morning ritual in activities ranging from prayer to bathing. In his installations, the elemental structure of the Pirha is used to evoke the essence of India; from the sweet smell of sandalwood in morning prayers to the musty aroma of damp soil on a rural farm. Gupta's Pirhas may stand alone or as a collective, symbols of belief and doubt. They explore the dialectic of the sacred and the secular, the passive and the aggressive, the absurd and the practical. In Gupta's paintings, contradictions, which intimately coexist throughout India, are presented as gray zones through which man and matter oscillate.