Partha Pratim Deb’s work at the CIMA Gallery’s exhibition opening on Friday evening. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

The celebrated American artist, Jeff Koons, known for sublimating the banal to the realms of art, is currently holding a show in the Versailles outside Paris, where his large and colourful works either pay homage to the Baroque and Rococo palace and the artists Fragonard and Boucher, or refer to actual happenings inside the Sun King’s chateau.

CIMA Gallery is celebrating its 15th anniversary by holding a show where 15 artists from all over India were invited “to respond to five artworks which profoundly impacted Indian visual thought and history.”

The works are Abanindranth’s Bharatmata, Ramkinkar’s The Santhal Family, M.F. Husain’s Zameen, Bhupen Khakhar’s Man with a Bouquet of Plastic Flowers and Guernica, which needs no introduction and to which artists have responded in the past. Hence the title of this exhibition — ReVIEW, opening on Friday evening. This idea of researching the relevance of works of art past has precedents in the modernists and, as the sensational Jeff Koons demonstrates, it is an accepted concept even today.

The 15 artists have responded to the classic works which have made a strong impression with various degrees of success.

Two, or perhaps three, of the participants have created works that hark back to the originals without sacrificing their personal and recognisable style.

There is a certain freshness in which they view a classic. Red is the dominant colour in Partha Pratim Deb’s work as in the Bhupen original. But it is gazpacho, not bloody.

But with its wave of green lines on top and the quirky vignettes with flowers sprouting from the most unlikely places, Deb holds his own although the cross reference is clear.

Mithu Sen’s feminine bouquets in delicate watercolour with their penile blooms may or may not bring back memories of the Khakhar. But it is recognisably a work of this artist with its sexual underpinnings.

Cityscapes and their underlying design inspire Samit Das to create grid-like structures. Guernica has goaded him to do the same but in shades of grey and black. Bharatmata meets Picasso’s painting in Alok Bal’s India embodied as a woman in a black sari walking a tightrope using Picasso’s “eyes” (intellect) for equilibrium.

Rashmi Bagchi Sarkar is usually a compelling painter. Here her work referencing Bharatmata is a trifle too decorative.

Kinghsuk Sarkar brings the winged Nike into his Baij recall with a rough-hewn surface. Jogen Chowdhury’s large and small Guernica drawings are strong. Not surprising. Drawing is his forte.