Rosemarie Trockel’s Buffalo Billy + Milly; (below) a work by Ranjan Mukhopadhyay

Not for more than 10 years have Indian contemporary artists been experimenting in video art, by which time and earlier, it had already become an established art form in the West. This will become quite obvious when one drops by at the exhibition celebrating 40 years of video art on at Max Mueller Bhavan till Wednesday.

Screens — split into three in one case — and terminals greet visitors as they enter the building, and these have been installed in the foyer, on the staircase and on both the floors.

Video art derives its name from video tape which is not exactly wear and tear proof. Hence this effort on the part of German museums and institutions to restore, preserve and disseminate the heritage of video art. It is because of the fragility of video tape that much of this information has been transferred to DVDs that are hardier and easier to handle.

According to a press release, the Goethe-Institut compiled this exhibition of 12 DVDs containing 59 works by various artists with a total running time of over 25 hours. Of course it is not possible for viewers to see all the videos at a single go but from the bits and pieces that one could catch, they confirm all the ideas that one had about this art form — that unlike features video art has no narrative, no actors and the best ones don’t fail to surprise.

Nam June Paik is often credited with having sired this art form, and we get a chance to see his Good Morning, Mr Orwell. There are other classics like Joseph Beuys’ Filz TV, Rebecca Horn’s Malerei Deckt Zu, Kunst Deckt Auf and Rosemarie Trockel’s Buffalo Billy + Milly. Presented here in collaboration with Khoj Kolkata, 40Yearsvideoart.De — Part 1 has to its credit a substantial, lavishly illustrated catalogue.

Gallery K2’s exhibition of drawings has a surprise in Ranjan Mukhopadhyay, who is certainly not a name one has come upon before.

It is true that most artists trained in Calcutta are skilled draughtsmen but Mukhopadhyay’s skill is of a higher order. The masterly fashion in which he gives shape to limbs, muscles and bones with a few deft strokes in not something one sees everyday. These nudes are figures of elegant sophistication.

Nabanita Javed’s work too seems to have improved by leaps and bounds. She may not have the skill of a trained artist but her drawings executed with the minimum of fuss have a feminine delicacy.

Ritendra Roy’s architectural drawings with their stairways and pillars have a romantic quality about them, although the falling leaves and other intrusions could have been done away with. He uses graphite and acrylic on Nepali handmade paper and this gives his work a sombre quality.

B.R. Panesar’s two drawings with ink may at first sight look like smudges but they demonstrate his control over the medium.

Paresh Maity has contributed one large work on canvas, the usual kind with eyes gone askew and tiny birds. There are others by Bikash Bhattacharjee and K.G. Subramanyan, but these are familiar works of the two senior artists.

Venkat Bothsa is a sculptor from Andhra Pradesh who has filled the galleries of Seagull Arts & Media Resource Centre with life-size fibreglass figures of mohinis with large breasts and behinds, often in the poses of nayikas and nymphs in classical Indian sculpture, but with only one big difference.

Their epidermis is composed of lush vegetation, lavish advertisement spreads from glossies and bright psychedelic patterns and multifarious other images that could have been projected directly on their naked skin.

It is quite startling to see bouquets and hands sprouting out of a woman’s luscious breasts, a blonde staring out of the back of woman in the attitude of a dryad, or a woman’s head painted with the colours of racing cars. The juxtapositions often create intriguing and intricate designs. Skilled, no doubt, this artist is, particularly in the manner he gives even the images on the “second skin” a highly sensuous quality, but one can tire of oomph and colour at such a lavish scale.