Gupta is indeed a magician of the mundane. He works with a wide range of media — from sculpture and painting to installation and photography. His distinctive feature has been in taking objects from everyday life and elevating them to artwork; to him also goes the credit of fashioning art out of kitchenware. In his recent solo exhibition at the Bodhi Art Gallery, he placed an assortment of tiffin-carriers on a sushi conveyer belt — inspired by Japanese kaiten-zushi, a restaurant where plates are placed on a rotating belt. Consumption, consumerism, globalisation and mobility — the work brings together various threads of Gupta’s oeuvre. “Here I’m talking about globalisation: the migration of culture through food. The work is titled Fait Matters,” says Gupta.

The 43-year-old’s fascination with utensils began when he was a boy. “I have always helped my sister and mother in the kitchen and I realised what a big role the vessels we cooked in play in the perception we have of our lives,” says Gupta.

A sense of a country convulsed by change always comes through his work. You often come across liminal spaces in his work — loaded airport trolleys, railway stations and taxis — which speak of people on the move. Sample: Across Seven Seas, a room-sized airport conveyor belt cast in aluminium, topped with 30 metal suitcases and bundles, which was sold for £550,000 to a German collector at the Basel art fair.

Unlike Atul Dodiya, who got noticed because Indian galleries have been showing his work at various fairs around the world, Gupta’s international buyer base is larger. “Subodh has very strong international connections and representatives, with galleries like the New York-based Pierre Huber Gallery promoting his work. The sale of Very Hungry God has led to a dramatic rise in his non-Indian collector base,” says Dinesh Vazirani of Saffron Art.

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