Aparajita Jain and Peter Nagy (co-directors of Nature Morte) are proud to announce the opening of a permanent space for the gallery in Mumbai, occupying the entire third floor of Block A of the historic Dhanraj Mahal at Apollo Bandar. Joining the family of contemporary art galleries in the Colaba neighborhood, our windows look directly upon the Bombay Yacht Club and the new tower of the Taj Mahal Hotel.

The gallery will open with a solo show of new works by the celebrated artist Subodh Gupta, who was born in Bihar in 1964 and is based in the New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon. This is the seventh solo show that Nature Morte is hosting with Gupta in India, and opening our Mumbai space with him is particularly appropriate as we opened our Neeti Bagh space in New Delhi (home to the gallery from 2003 to 2020) with his solo show. Entitled “A small village, around the corner, up in a mountain,” Gupta’s exhibition will include sculptures, paintings, and wall reliefs, all created in the past few years.
The works in the exhibition continue with Gupta’s provocative investigations into the associations of common objects, realized as complex free-standing sculptures, wall reliefs, and paintings. Vessels used for cooking that are ubiquitous throughout India remain the artist’s basic vocabulary but a wide range of other objects now join in the mix, most of which continue to allude to the social stratifications of Indian society. Gupta’s use and depictions of these humble objects act as metaphors for the passage of time, our human condition, the bonds of family and community. His titles for many of these works speak of the discoveries and mysteries associated with travel and the theatre of life.

Subodh Gupta’s works have been exhibited in solo exhibitions in prestigious museums and venues such as Monnaie de Paris (2018); Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, UK (2017); Art Basel, Switzerland (2017), The Smithsonian Museum of Asian Art, Washington DC (2017); National Gallery of Victoria, Australia (2016); Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany (2014); Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland (2013); Kiran Nadar Museum, New Delhi (2012); and the Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland (2011). His mid-career survey, curated by Germano Celant, was held at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi in 2012, where his monumental sculpture “People Tree” is permanently installed on the front lawns, facing the India Gate. Solo shows of his works have been hosted by the gallery Hauser & Wirth in London, New York, and Somerset UK and by the Galeria Continua in San Gimignano, Italy and Paris, France.