Metaphors and symbols are so much a part of human thought, so woven are they into our speech and perception, our gestures and diet, our customs and taboos, that their ubiquitous presence in traditional visual culture is accepted without enquiry. But much of modern art is anchored to conscious references and that’s what CIMA’s current show, on till April 3, reminds viewers of.

As Kingshuk Sarkar’s leaping, looping surge of voluminous grey-black hurtles across two canvases and crashes into a frozen spray of sooty splinters and blobs, you think of elemental forces (picture). Forces that warn of environmental upheavals, even as the dark smoky colour speaks of toxic wastes. A riveting diptych.

Shreyasi Chatterjee’s unusual métier — constructing collages from fabric, thread and paint — yields suggestions both in the medium and in the matter. A feminine identity and the intimate minutiae of homemaking are archly premised on what is a romantic landscape of infectious, compelling radiance.

In their tribute to Bhupen Khakhar, who died in 2003, Partha Pratim Deb and Abir Karmakar revisit The Man with a Bouquet of Plastic Flowers. Deb retains the general layout of the original while incorporating little deviations with his usual impish humour. But it is Karmakar’s self-portrait that haunts the viewer with its pensive vulnerability. It’s the male torso that he highlights, the lower anatomy, discreetly smudged in shadows, disappearing beyond the frame. This is not the sculpted six-pack pin-up of heroes but a fleshy, somewhat flaccid body typical of the average man, and it is portrayed with empathy.

A. Balasubramaniam’s small sculpture suggests a teasing paradox in the title, In, But Out. The closely arranged copper wire shaped like a head traps space in but is empty of substance. Or is the tangible — that is, the head mounted in a box frame —locked “in” while what’s tenuous, like thought and memory, remains “out”?

There’s an in-out conceit in Sumitro Basak’s art too. The spry stylization makes figures flat but agile and edgy. They seem caught in the pincer pinch of contrary realities — the internal and the external — which must be negotiated, nimbly, precariously. Their bodies, invaded by external reality, seem to have been turned inside out, as a hand does a glove. Pulling what’s meant to be “in” quite “out” — the innards. Survival, therefore, calls for crafty acrobatics, because it’s only for the fittest, isn’t it?

The optical dynamics of Baiju Parthan’s prints induce the viewer’s close scrutiny. From his tiny, meticulously placed cones, triangles and springs in metallic tones there emerge large images as you step back. Somewhat in the manner of Ben-Day dots. Stepping forward dissipates the illusion as the images dissolve into their neat little components.

It’s difficult to gauge whether it’s anger or just blasé irreverence that makes Alok Bal resurrect Abanindranath’s Bharat Mata in a dark robe of mourning. Maybe there’s a little of both, for the one is often inverted into the other: when things are too bleak, on the brink — as they indeed are in India — what can one do but resort to black humour? The devi, demeaned, must ever walk the tightrope, holding a balancing pole that uses as weights excerpts from the iconic work on the horror of war, Guernica.

Sanjeev Sonpimpare’s urban fable catches the protagonist — himself — disoriented, teetering, split down the middle in Dividers. The other work, Barefoot Back 2 Bihar, probably refers to the politics of intolerance in Mumbai against north Indians. His technique of abbreviating images in black and white against solid ground colours approximates computer graphics to hold the eye.

But Jaya Ganguly’s protagonist, a limp, putrid, sub-human creature, bloated in some parts and shrivelled in others, seems to have been through a wringer: a survivor of trauma. But if the violence is palpable here, it is noiselessly implicit in Samir Aich’s acrylic. Its survivor, with an open wound that unzips the head as it were, is drained to a stark, fleshless outline. The silence grows in Jogen Chowdhury’s drawing. The violence is chillingly understated, even clinical, as the prone figure, with raw gashes on the back, appears to be pulverized, maybe dead, and on a dissecting table.

But if the dystopia of urban artists unsettles the viewer, the antidote comes from the refreshing, animistic imagination of tribal art, structured into inherited iconography though it is. Mayank Kumar Shyam’s black-and-white drawing, and Ram Singh Urveti’s colourful acrylic indicate the vitality of both their visual tradition and tribal myths. M.F. Husain, Ganesh Pyne, Arpita Singh, Atul Dodiya, Jyoti Bhatt and Jitish Kallat are also among the artists represented.