By Calvin Keogh

India Rising. Yes, India’s rising. We’ve all heard the mantra. With a booming economy, it’s never been a more opportune time for the youth of the subcontinent. More than half of the billion-plus population is under 25 and, with a growing middle class flaunting its disposable income, their spending is predicted to rise by half this year alone. India’s cities are all geared up for a record binge of consumerism.

Brand consciousness and online consumption are the current trends but is anyone shopping for the future? Enter Anupam Poddar. Owner of a Rajasthan ‘boutique hotel’ recently voted ‘Best Décor in all Asia’, it was inevitable he would follow his mother as a collector of art. From the age of 26, Anupan has amassed over 2,100 works by young artists who represent ‘a vision of India to which he could relate’.

Works from the collection can be viewed daily free of charge at the DaimlerChrysler Contemporary in Berlin. Offering to the public changing displays of the company’s acquisitions, the gallery occupies the pre-war Weinhaus Huth, lone survivor of the bombed-out and now resurrected Potsdamer Platz. It’s next to the shopping mall opposite the Berlinale Palast. Ring the bell and take the elevator to the fourth floor.

Once through the metal doors and past the desk, first to catch the eye is a life-size baby elephant. Traditionally a symbol of fertility, the surface of its body and that of the two large discs it faces appear to hum with energy. Perhaps in allusion to the sexed-up spirituality of Tantrism, they’re all thickly spread with variously colored bindis (forehead dots) squirming with little tails in a wild ‘tornado of sperm’.

A goat cowers in another room. Trailing a jacket, the pattern of which is repeated on its own coat, it suggests human appropriation and distortion of divine creation. On the walls, watercolor depictions include rocking-horses and a tiger-skin hot water bottle. A set of pearl-wrapped antlers, surrounded by more sperm bindis and a partially-covered tusk and small bones, rises from a fleece mount nearby.

These animal bones are fiberglass fakes. In the main room are genuine ones, suspended in clear glass cases. Pelvises, fibulae and other odds and ends are all coated in gnawed meat-like red velvet, inset with gem clusters and trimmed with black lace. Especially striking are a necklace of vertebrae and, strung with tassels, a handsomely embroidered rib fan. All of the bones are human, by the way.

At the opposite end of the room glitters a massive disco ball which, on closer inspection, is a tight cluster of shiny metal cans. Lashings of Vaseline so gooey you want to touch coat a faux-leather armchair with fleshy pink slashes which rests alongside. The seat reappears in a poster-size photo of the artist, Subodh Gupta, in all his naked glory, luxuriantly spent, lathered head to toe in Vaseline.

These and other works are on loan as part of the Private/Corporate IV exhibition, one of a series in which DaimlerChrysler presents selected pieces from its own holdings alongside those of a private collection. According to Art Manager Dr. Renate Wienhager, contemporary art ‘thrives on dialogue and context’, and the intention is to develop the potential of the works by ‘tying them into new conversations’.

That Gupta’s pubes are tactfully hidden by an especially large blob of Vaseline was perhaps the rationale behind placing scenes from the life of a eunuch closeby. The photographic series ‘Me Myself Mona Ahmed’ captures public moments of the Delhi castrato, one of a community believed by some to possess occult powers and hired to bless events such as childbirths, weddings and housewarmings.

Back in the first room and in dialogue with the elephant is ‘Bird’, a DVD video. In continual replay, an Indian woman of ample proportions, entirely naked, sways on a box, jumps from the box, flaps her arms about, rolls on the floor and generally finds lots of ways to get her fleshy parts shaking. You can watch this, see the other exhibits and judge for yourself at DaimlerChrysler through to the end of May.

 
DaimlerChrysler Contemporary
Haus Huth
Alte Potsdamerstrasse 5
(open daily 11-18)

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