Upadhyay's canvases and sculptures are a kind of cultural criticism. Their starting point is India's spiritual and visual heritage, but they link directly to the present world to such a degree that they could be understood as caricatures of New Age philosophy.
On monochrome backgrounds, vedic drawings that are thousands of years old appear as if projected onto floating, radiant infants, whose facial expressions show tolerance for the canvases of which their bodies have been made.
The images and sculptures show ancient Indian culture on the one hand, but remind one of works by Andy Warhol in the 70s that showed a strong stand against American consumer culture. Upadhyay gets across his point about the absurdity of the consumer's existence, but his work does not extend so far at to convince us about this stand.
Author: Eszter Götz
