In the middle of the gallery at Birla Academy was a tiny island of rubble with an upright tamper: a common enough sight on city roads that transcends the particular to symbolize serial makeovers of metros that destroy to build. Figures painted in line cavorted on the floor around it in a ritual Dance Over Death that reminded you how development comes at the price of an uprooted past. Clearly, the creator of the installation, Sanatan Dinda, was abandoning his formidable illusionism for a provocative conceit.
Although it virtually became the centerpiece at the annual show of Reflections of Another Day (RAD) in March, works by some other participants also vied for attention. Like Srihari Datta’s mournful landscape where a shaggy, tangled curtain of dark watercolour ends in a fringe of tentacles around a dead branch (picture); its ironic counterpoint, Sumantra Mukherjee’s loud, abrasive faux-Lichtenstein punch of phrases from films, comics and posters; Rathin Kanji’s urban chic; Asim Paul’s wrestling red and black, kept partly in check by regimented rows of impasto acrylic drops; and Timir Brahma’s wry comment on leaders whose ‘immortal’ busts soon become anonymous.
Subrata Saha’s 120” X 60” diptych of a mangled terrain is no less striking: its frightening devastation puts industrial civilization in the dock. As damning are Puspen Roy’s understated montage of a grey land with grey smoke, grey skies and leafless plants, and Chandra Bhattacharjee’s burnt, disintegrating blossoms. And Tapas Majumdar’s surreal crater suspended in black space is riveting in its ominous strangeness.
On the other hand, the playful tapestry of form and colour in Chandana Khan’s acrylic is a quaint fantasy. Partha Pratim Roy’s quirky horse with red eyes would be amusing if it didn’t look as though it had collapsed on the ground. Sudhangshu Bandopadhyay’s spry, drifting, amorphous daubs of watercolour, and Biswa Basu’s assemblage are appealing in different ways. Ranajit Adhikary’s scribbles, Probal Barat’s Thakumar Jhuli, Suman Kabiraj’s Midsummer and Rathin Dey’s lean tower drew attention too.
