Subodh Gupta: Guests, Strangers and Interlopers

The SCAD Museum of Art proudly presents the first solo museum exhibition in the U.S. by internationally acclaimed artist Subodh Gupta. "Guests, Strangers and Interlopers" engages with otherness and ambiguous identities through the evocative use of found materials and objects. It invites the viewer to consider their subjective responses to self and others.

This exhibition in the Pamela Elaine Poetter Gallery explores the artist's ongoing concern with the vessel as a vehicle and the symbolic references to mobility and spirituality inherent in the object. The museum building's provenance as part of the former Central of Georgia Railway depot — built in 1853 — resonates with Gupta's practice, as themes throughout his artwork consistently relate to migration, labor and transcendence. Located in the vast space that originally functioned as a freight-loading platform, the museum gallery will house four large-scale artworks by the artist.

The installation "Terminal" is a constellation of 1- to 15-foot-tall towers composed of stacked brass domestic containers, spun together with thread into an interconnected web. These totems form a landscape of the towering spires marking churches, mosques and temples in real cityscapes.

The exhibition also includes a new series titled "From the earth, but not of it." Each of the seven artworks in the series is an adapted 4-foot terra-cotta granary jar, a continuation of Gupta's use of objects relating to sustenance. The symbolic transformation of these found objects is realized through the attachment of pots, wire and fiberglass, all coated in plaster. The modified vessels morph into almost figurative forms despite their initial familiarity. Clay, made from the earth's soil, becomes something that appears literally alien, highlighting the presence of the supernatural and cosmic within the everyday.

Exhibition overview from museum website