Subodh Gupta has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the last few years. The Bihar-born artist’s works reference traditional India, yet are made with the sleekest of materials: glossy oils in his paintings and gleaming stainless steel utensils in his installations. It is this mix of the sleek and down-home that makes his work such a hot ticket for high-profile collectors, who include François Pinault, Dakis Joannou and Charles Saatchi. Indeed, the value of his works sold at auction has risen from $23,000 (in May 2005) to just under $1.5 million (in June 2008), and as a measure of his success, he and wife Bharti Kher were recently signed to premier gallery Hauser & Wirth.