The latest to join the family of contemporary art galleries in the Colaba neighborhood of Mumbai is Delhi’s popular art gallery Nature Morte. Founded by Peter Nagy in New Delhi in 1997 (a previous iteration of the gallery operated in New York’s East Village between 1982 to 1988) as a commercial gallery and a curatorial experiment, Nature Morte today represents some of India’s most widely exhibited and commercially successful artists, including Bharti Kher, Asim Waqif, Ayesha Singh and Subodh Gupta, whose solo show will inaugurate the Mumbai space.
“Mumbai has always been on our radar. We have mounted five large shows in Mumbai in the past (four at Famous Studios and one in Kala Ghoda), and we sell more works from our Delhi gallery to collectors in Mumbai than in Delhi itself. But we realized that many of the artists we represent, particularly those who live in Delhi, are not represented by any gallery in Mumbai, so they're not having solo shows here. So our program will be mostly these artists but we will also be bringing international artists to Mumbai, where the market is opening up to them (much more so than in Delhi),” says Peter Nagy, who along with Aparajita Jain, is the co-director of Nature Morte.
The new space will also help the gallery bring in more international flavour in its programming. In the near future the gallery plans to collaborate with Berlin-based Polish sculptor Alicja Kwade for her first solo show in Mumbai.
Art meets heritage
The Mumbai gallery is nestled inside Dhanraj Mahal a historic building at Apollo Bandar. “We didn't want a large space. But we did want was a space that had the feel of the city, and Dhanraj Mahal supplies that. Looking out of our windows onto the Yacht Club, the Taj Mahal Hotel, and the Gateway of India there is no doubt where we are! And, of course, it is wonderful to join the community of great galleries that are already in Colaba,” explains Nagy who worked with Rajiv Saini and Associates a leading design studio in India for the interiors of the space. “We wanted to try something different from the regular clean, white-box gallery space. The space we signed the lease on was a completely empty concrete shell, so we went with the concrete, being inspired by the architecture of Tadao Ando. Rajiv Saini, an old friend, knew exactly what we were after. He brought in other materials such as steel (both stainless and corten) and reclaimed wood. So the space has a lot of materiality to it and feels both raw and sophisticated at the same time,” says Nagy.
Kicking off with Subodh Gupta
Nature Morte Mumbai opens with a solo show of new works by Subodh Gupta. This is the seventh solo show that the gallery is hosting with Gupta in India. Titled “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.
Nature Morte was the first gallery from India to be included in the top international art fairs (starting with the Armory Show in NY in 2005, followed by Art Basel and Fiac Paris in 2006). “The biggest thrills come when the Indian artists we grew up with in New Delhi have large shows in the world capitals of art, such as New York, Paris and Venice,” says Nagy.
So what can art lovers look forward to at Nature Morte Mumbai in the coming times? “Fantastic, intriguing, provocative and inspiring exhibitions of new works by artists that you may be familiar with and others who you have never heard of before,” promises Nagy. Further down the calendar, Nature Morte has announced plans to exhibit New Delhi-based duo Thukral & Tagra and the Italian photographer Lorenzo Vitturi.
Note: Subodh Gupta’s show “A small village, around the corner, up in the mountain” will run from January 19th to March 9th, 2024.
Gallery hours: Monday through Saturday, 11 am to 7 pm. Closed on Sundays.
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