Some of the artists whose works are on display at CIMA’s Summer Show 2010. Picture by Aranya Sen

Humungous is a fitting description of the range of works on display at CIMA’s Summer Show 2010. The annual display showcases the gallery’s collection, including both past and more recent acquisitions.

The exhibits include recent Paresh Maitys, sprawling acrylic works by tribal artist Bhuribai, the most recent Suvaprasanna owl (resplendent in a luminous purple background, done in oil and charcoal), Paramjit Singh’s signature charcoal drawings and Jayasri Burman’s exquisitely finished mixed-media work Tarulata.

There are lone works by Suhas Roy, Anju Dodiya and even the elusive Chittrovanu Mazumdar, as are pieces by the late Bhupen Khakar, Shakila and young Bhopal-based artist Mayank Kumar Shyam and works by a bunch of up-and-coming city artists, including Rashmi Bagchi Sarkar, Manas Acharya, Satyajit Roy, Gautam Khamaru and Sumitro Basak.

Recent works by masters like Ramananda Bandyopadhyay, Jogen Chowdhury, Suhas Roy, Sakti Burman, Laluprasad Shaw and Yusuf are a delight to watch; this is art that provides a glimpse into arriving at an evolved visual language. In contrast, works by the new generation offer the process of arriving at such idioms.

The always-mutating art of Sumitro Basak offers a stylistic shift in his lone piece; a watercolour titled Kaa-Kaa Ki-Ki, an avian study in watercolour that is miles away from his dissected dialect of collage-like post-figurative work. Watercolour was Sumitro’s early passion, and this is perhaps a throwback to his roots in the medium.

On the other hand, Satyajit Roy’s previously witnessed watercolours give way to full-blown larger works in oil. His characteristic humour, primarily by way of juxtaposing the absurd, remains intact; in Metamorphosis II, Roy paints sparring boxing gloves with macau heads, their vivid colour scheme dominated by a symbolic crimson.

Kingshuk Sarkar’s preoccupation with violence translates into his diptychs, Cry and Threat, large acrylic and mixed-media works in duochrome that splash over a neutral white backdrop in furious splashes.

Debraj Goswami delights with his works; with his unique perspectives on an animated world, quite literally. Nobina Gupta’s Claustrophobic Emergence in pen-and-ink on paper construction is another unique piece, blending the figurative with textural in an idiosyncratic manner.

The display has fewer sculptures on offer.

Both lyrical masters, Bimal Kundu and Niranjan Pradhan’s sculptures establish the fluid ease with their media.

Tapas Biswas’s detailed bronze work Had It Been So stands out, a phantasmal study in angelic acrobats. An angel figure recurs in Shakila’s lone work, an untitled collage that’s vivid in tone, luscious in form.

The inimitable Mayank Kumar Shyam turns out another riveting work in Mata Kacchua (Mother Turtle); an acrylic and pen-and-ink work over his characteristically barren white backdrop that establishes his visual language is special.

A rare piece by Anju Dodiya, the watercolour and charcoal Head In The Clouds is a work with multiple layers of meaning; the Victorian neck frill complements the political undercurrent; a metaphor for the nonchalance and the immediacy of the here and now.

CIMA’s Summer Show is on till August 14.