Gupta hit it big when his installation at the 2006 Saffron Art auction netted Rs 60 lakh. Recently, he broke his own record at Christie’s in a post-war contemporary sale, where his installation went for Rs 2.5 crore. The work was sourced from gallery Art & Public in Geneva that showcased a collection of his creations at the Frieze Art Fair in 2005. “In this auction, they did not show his work in a separate Asian section. Subodh was the only Indian artist there. It goes to show that he has made the crossover from an Asian artist to an international one,” says Vazirani.

In the Edge of Desire, an exhibition of contemporary art organised in association with the Asia Society and Art Gallery of Western Australia, curator Chaitanya Sambrani showcased three works by Gupta under the sub-head, Transient Self. One was a passport-sized painting dabbed with cow dung, with the word ‘Bihari’ emblazoned in neon at the bottom. The second was a photograph of the nude artist seated on a leather sofa; the third ‘self-portrait’ was the aluminium-plated bicycles that milkmen use. “Subodh presents the viewer with local and global identities through his twin self-portraits. It’s a tongue-in-cheek comment reverberating with humour and irony,” comments Sambrani. The work mulls on the nostalgia for the lifestyle of traditional India and interrogates the artist’s culture and self.

But even as Gupta teases out the cracks between a traditional way of life and the pressures of globalization, his work has universal appeal. Gupta’s earlier works, says Geeta Mehra of Sakshi Art Gallery, were ‘loaded’ with information from Bihar or his personal life. “But he has been able to do away with the narrative and bring in an abstraction which is universal. This is why his works have a wide appeal. They are local but equally global. You don’t need a cultural subtext to read his works but they are specific to his locale and country.”

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