Still art by Subodh Gupta titled "My Village"

When you consider still life, think of Giorgio Morandi and Georges Braque. This century gave us Subodh Gupta and still life. Pledge, a show by Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher that features nine of their most well-known works, will present and support artists in a historic manner. The nine pieces in this collection include two breath-taking My Village I & II oils on linen masterpieces. 

These two works by Subodh Gupta are profoundly modernist and appear to be an investigation of how to condense his own radical painting attempts into "a kind of shorthand." Subodh Gupta employs his basic vessels and a few autumnal strokes to create these works. 

In both of these sculptures, one in a brass tone and the other in steel and brass, it seems as though he has absorbed the banalities of everyday existence and replicated them in still life as eerie objects packed with atmosphere and mood. 

The title "My Village" gives a rustic feel, despite the fact that these two still life are superb illustrations of Leonardo da Vinci's maxim "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." 

In fact, Subodh's still life with containers have a quiet elegance about them that respects both antiquity and aesthetic form. Each topic that Subodh chooses to paint has a secret meaning. He also embellishes the brilliant flames of the containers with imaginative strokes. 

In several ways, this invokes both the past and art history as well as the present. This is due to the fact that over the years, kitchens all around the world have consistently employed the same items. Even if they are a part of their own vernacular, we go back to the first decade of the previous century. The revolutionary philosophy of surrealism was developed in 1920s bohemian Paris and was based on the idea that the human mind is capable of limitless creation, dreaming, and imagining. 

By doing that, Subodh proves that artists must go above and beyond to create a new language. The framing is another thing that grabs notice. With a rough linen gunny bag texture that makes us think of rice sacks as the background, it has a rustic sound. 

Forms and textures recur and reverberate throughout the compositions, encouraging a poetic dialogue between the objects. However, life must provide an aesthetic experience, and both of these works do this in a straightforward way. 

I've created a number of sizable still life paintings over the previous two years, says Subodh in an exclusive. These two small works of art were created especially for this exhibition. 

Peter Nagy of Nature Morte analyses still life in the following manner: 

“The strength of these paintings lies in their simplicity. The juxtaposition between the trompe l'oeil metallic containers and the unfinished linen backgrounds compels one to investigate the humble and inquire about the nature of reflection”. 

Simple objects like flowers, leaves, jugs, and other everyday items contain so much in the way of colors, forms, and interactions that Samuel John People, a brave Modernist who committed his life to painting the perfect still life, said in 1929: “I can never envision the mystery ending.” By extending this conundrum, these two works by Subodh add to his corollary of talks on boats, which displays a multiplicity of socio-cultural connotations and confluences.