Kingshuk Sarkar’s painting Parasite on view at CIMA Gallery’s exhibition Concepts & Ideas 2008 opening on Friday evening. Picture by Aranya Sen

Concepts & Ideas 2008 being organised by CIMA Gallery opens on Friday with the works of five artists — four of them primarily using paint and brush, and the fifth a video camera — who even when they use a conventional medium give it a new twist through their ability to reinterpret accepted modes of practice.

Kingshuk Sarkar, initially trained at Visva-Bharati, went on to learn a traditional Japanese technique of painting using crushed stone pigment. In this exhibition he uses this technique to create images quite as large and in-your-face as those on billboards and cinema hoardings.

His paintings of a man peeping cautiously through a doorway, of a woman’s eye juxtaposed with a hand mimicking a revolver, and the giant ants crawling beside the woman having a facial have a strong visual appeal. The layers of smouldering crimson, and slathered and dripping pigment next to highly finished areas, at times stand out of the canvas.

Kalighat patas and popular Ravi Varma paintings are what Avishek Sen, a product of Rabindra Bharati University and Santiniketan, begins with. In his My Family in India series, he doesn’t stop at appropriating these iconic images.

He turns them into a scrapbook of personal commentary on contemporary life by pasting images from the print media, posters and religious prints on them. At times these collages can look a little cluttered as in the one of the feline hypocrite.

Concepts & current ideas

Sanjeev Sonpimpare from Mumbai explores the idea of migration in his boldly painted canvases that use cityscapes as a drop.

Varanasi turns into Mumbai and vice versa, as brightly-clad Marathi women make apparently welcoming gestures and a Marathi warrior with a lance stands between an autorickshaw and taxi, usually driven by upcountry men.

These were painted in response to the drive to throw out “aliens” who flock to the city in pursuit of their dreams. The backdrops resemble silkscreen but are actually handpainted like Avishek Sen’s popular images.

Sonpimpare has also created an installation with “migratory” flamingos stalking the pavements of Mumbai, home to thousands of migrant workers.

In stark contrast with the colourful gestures of these three artists are Rm Palaniappan and Kabir Mohanty who do things with the minimum of fuss. Conte in shades of brown and sheets of paper is the only arrow in the quiver of Rm Palaniappan.

At first glance they could look like geometric patterns or a diagram tracing the trajectory of a missile. But these sharp angles, squiggles and dashes are taut like bow strings and are products of cerebration.

Kabir Mohanty’s video camera stares out of a window and records grainy images that reveal as much as they conceal minute details of the scene. The constantly shifting light and shadow create subtle rhythms in sync with the background score of chirping sparrows, the harsh caw of crows and the rush of vehicles on the overlooking street.

The splashes of brilliance and the dark angles create abstract patterns. He uses four tiny terminals that viewers are allowed to handle to show the images. These may look like random shots but one can sense that Mohanty is in absolute control.