I made the trip to Tanya Bonakdar Gallery late one Saturday evening in Manhattan. It was nearly freezing outside, but a bike ride seemed the quickest way to beat the 6 PM closing time. The entrance to the gallery was surprisingly elusive. After pulling on a number of false doors, one finally gave way. I was greeted by a rush of warm air, the subdued murmur of the staff an hour before closing time, and a lack of any obvious artwork or text.

The next day when I had the chance to ask a friend who previously worked for Tanya about this kind of understated attitude, she explained to me that subtlety dictates much of the ethos of the gallery. And, after my ride past a sea of obtrusively valiant Anish Kapoors and Dana Shultzs, I welcomed something more reserved.

`Tanya Bonakdar Gallery on West 21st St`

Bonakdar is currently showing Shilpa Gupta, a Mumbai-based artist whose interdisciplinary sculptural practice challenges the ways audio and visual technologies typically disseminate ideas of nationalism, religious fundamentalism, and social identity through the strategic reversal of mechanical functions. Although this may be Gupta’s first show with the gallery her illustrious international career has seen solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Arnolfini in Bristol, Museum voor Moderne Kunst in Arnhem, and Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi among others.

The first thing that catches my eye as I enter the first floor of galleries, is a small bronze sculpture affixed to the wall consisting of two parts. Entitled: A Liquid, The Mouth Froze, the work features a cast of an open mouth made from gunmetal and a small vertically etched brass plate reading,

“I was walking on the street. A car stopped, a few men stepped out, and pushed into my mouth, a liquid. The mouth froze.”

`Image courtesy of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery`

Continuing down the hall I am beckoned by a faint murmuring sound—like someone singing in the next room over. As I push through a double-layered, heavy soundproof curtain into what seems at first glance to be a pitch-black room, the cast of the mouth begins to make sense.

Listening Air is the central installation of the show and for good reason. The piece requires substantial time and attention to parse but it’s well worth the effort. My experience of entering the room was one of continual surprise, disorientation, anxiety, and awe.

The first thing that one notices is the overwhelming chorus of voices (from where is unclear). The only visible objects to the viewer upon immediately entering the room are a scattering of dim glowing orbs: incandescent light bulbs that hang throughout the space. But, after a pause, as the eyes began to adjust to the darkness a second set of hanging forms come into view. Are they speakers? No, microphones. No—speakers disguised as microphones. A signature Gupta reversal!

The only logical move in this foreboding field of dislocated sounds, music stands, and vaguely visible visitors ambling through space seems to be to find a stool. Once seated my eyes and ears have a moment to relocate. The voices aren't speaking in meaningless murmurs, they’re Italian factory workers, Chinese university students, or farmers in new Dehli singing songs of protest and anthems of solidarity. And, what once seemed like a static constellation of lights and mics, is actually in motion. The pairs of hanging lights and suspended “speakers” are connected to ovular tracks and are crawling gracefully as if they’ve been propelled by the energy of the space or encouraged to act against the laws of gravity because it’s just barely dark enough in the room.

This moment of realization is delightful. In my experience of Listening Air, fear rapidly gives way to awe, and then to excitement as layers upon layers of perceptual output reveal themselves. Shadows dance across the walls, choruses sprout unpredictably from invisible speakers, and an earthy smell permeates the space.

But, there seems to be a sweet spot with all of Gupta’s work in this show. If your eyes linger too long, adjust too well, or become just a little too attentive to the specificities of material; the conceptual mirroring of form and fiction starts to dissolve. Even in the dim lighting of Listening Air, the faux metal mics don’t do enough to hide their plastic cores and imitation painted aging. The slippage of material texture and conceptual intent is only heightened for me in the two second-floor galleries where cold, bright beams of blinding gallery lighting, quickly betray inattention.

Untitled (Spoken Poem in a Bottle), epitomizes this disconnect. From a distance, I am enticed. Rows of varying sizes and shapes of glass bottles rest on a four-tier shelving system laced with glowing light bulbs. But, as I move inwards, there's an uncanny newness to all of the items. As if a studio intern in Mumbai, Los Angeles, or New York removed the bottles from their Amazon Prime boxes two or three weeks before the show, and hurriedly scrawled the messages that label them with a fine point sharpie.

After this unnerving realization, I found myself embarrassingly unable to accept the propositions of any of Gupta’s work on the second floor. Even the series of Untitled (Jailed Poets drawings) which I initially found myself drawn to, felt devoid of guts: dustless, and sterile.

As more and more fast-paced flattened forms move across our screens and alter global histories, physical fine art objects seem to be one of the last places to care about material. I think that’s why I felt so repulsed by some of Gupta’s latest forms. Not because I didn’t believe in their power or the potential they hold to spark interesting conversation, but because I needed them to be more. I need them now more than ever to demand attentiveness to every mark, every brush stroke, and every layer of dust.

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Shilpa Gupta Skirts Material —Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

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