India in Korea

There is only one gallery in Cheonan. It’s a small, two-floor white space designed to house a single show, best known for collecting Hirst pieces. Outside the gallery in a glass box is a piece Hirst calls “Hymn” and inside is a skeleton with eyes spinning round like golf balls.

There used to be another sculpture outside, a clever cartoon of a girl named “Charity.” On her broken leg, a cast, and in arm a sign saying, “Please Give Generously.” After a few years of notoriety they tore it down. The Arario gallery has sister shows happening simultaneously in New York, Beijing, and Seoul, where the latest Cheonan showcase of Subodh Gupta was before its arrival.

Subodh Gupta is one of India’s most contemporary artists, creating work to tender talking points about the class and economic status of his homeland. Upon first step into the gallery we were greeted by a wall of ready-made pots hung on their bottoms stretching open toward us.

Across from that, a spinning script of gold and silver pots on a conveyer belt lapping circles of light, out-shining the old and cracked pots hidden in the busyness. Untouchables, we guessed.

Upstairs a skull and a silver sea set down on the ground and covered by pots and spoons and coated guns, a white goat holding dominion. A cab cut in half and labeled “Everything is Inside.” We looked and found the trueness. Three giant buckets to jump in and carry water, a quiet film of Still Lives being destroyed by the constant racket of a dropping kitchen.

All the banging of pots and pans got us hungry. So out the doors towards the mall, we found comfort in old American habit. Pizza Hut. One Mountain Dew with pointing finger was delivered. So they said, let the white patrons have it.