(Top)A work by Shrabani Roy; A sculpture by K.S. Radhakrishnan (picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya) ; and a work by Pierre Antoniucci

Two artists trained in Santiniketan are holding their shows in the city. They are sculptor K.S. Radhakrishnan and Shrabani Roy, whose main medium is tapestry and applique clubbed with paintwork.

The latter is the younger of the two and her work has a certain frothiness about it that is a rare commodity among Indian artists, who make a living out of taking themselves seriously.

Her current exhibition at Akar Prakar proves yet again that she has a lightness of touch that she doesn’t abandon even when she is dealing with issues like the latent violence in our lives, and the women of our times torn between a traditional upbringing and the demands of a Westernised lifestyle.

A diptych shows a woman driving a car with an Indian stone masala grinder in the other.

In www.postcontemporarylife.com Roy uses the various sides of some tall black boxes to depict slices of a modern woman’s life with telling images like the close-up of a face behind sunshades, a finger pressing the buttons of her mobile phone, shapely long legs, a fleet of Nanos, wine glasses, and a computer terminal with the eyes of Horus on the screen and the mouse running away from it.

She also plays around with images, treating them like visual puns, and pokes fun at the convention of painting nudes by depicting one with a pot over her head.

K.S. Radhakrishnan, who is based in New Delhi, creates large bronze sculptures, although people here would be more familiar with his maquettes occasionally shown in group shows.

For the first time Radhakrishnan is going to exhibit a 60-foot-long work at the Birla Academy of Art & Culture from Tuesday.

Innumerable small size-zero men and woman dance to silent music on this wooden ramp. Above this sea of terpsichoreans, life-size figures of alternately men and women turn cartwheels, till they reach the crest of the ramp.

The last figure depicting frozen motion confronts a big rectangle of bronze which bears the figure’s outline, when it is supposed to cross that boundary. This is suggested by the title of the show, Liminal figures liminal space.

Whether Radhakrishnan has been able to communicate this or not is another matter, but most viewers will be impressed by the scale of this work and the feeling of grace and rhythm it conveys.

A Paris-based artist, Pierre Antoniucci, is holding an exhibition of his spare and structured works, with occasional touches of Gallic humour, at Gallery Rasa.

He is inspired by the geometry of cityscapes but figures also occupy much space in his paintings. He seems to have the Cubists at the back of his mind but he uses bright reds and blues that set Antoniucci apart from modernist asceticism.

There are flourishes of fantasy when an ordinary human being — mostly silhouettes — sprouts wings. He covers them with a thin layer of white, turning them chalky. His works are elliptical, walking the tightrope between abstraction and realism.