A figure created by Nidhi Jalan on display at Akar Prakar. Picture by Aranya Sen

Nidhi Jalan, who had worked and held exhibitions of her ceramics and paper work in this city years ago, has since moved to New York for advanced studies in visual arts, is exhibiting her installation titled Abol Tabol at Akar Prakar. Although she has read the Sukumar Ray classic only in translation, she was inspired by its universal appeal and satirical humour.

Her current work comprises a body of clay figures of anthropomorphic hybrids held in the toils of a giant squid spread all over the gallery floor. These are not meant to be illustrations but a continuation of Jalan’s work on metamorphosis.

Her male or female human figures have the heads of animals, even of winged and aquatic animals like the lion fish, mandrill, turtles, elephant, sea urchin (could be porcupine), frog, duck-billed platypus, rhinoceros, mandrill and pelican, standing, on their haunches or lying prostrate, depending on the creature represented. There creatures are either made of ceramic or stoneware.

Hybrids these indeed are but humour has nothing to do with them, not even satirical humour. But seen under the right kind of spotlights accompanied by canned sounds of Calcutta, the figures do have a presence that is a little eerie.

After a long break, Aakriti Art Gallery is holding an exhibition of two artists — sculptor Subrata Biswas and painter Asit Mondal at the same time in two different sections of the spacious gallery.

The sculptor uses bronze to create large heads with tiny people perched on the hooked nose located between two large eyes. These tiny figures sit on a pachyderm-like creature with an extended body, ride a similar animal holding double daggers in hand, or cling to a phallic form Chipko fashion.

While many of these larger figures look a little out of sorts, the smaller figures look pretty charming in a doll-like way. There is the child with a squirrel and a man fondling a cat. Not great pieces of sculpture but just pretty.

Asit Mondal is good at drawing. That is quite evident from his nude woman but when he paints he churns out poster-like pictures of Rajasthan, full of graceful women, turbaned men and rustic scenes where a camel and men playing the flute are indispensable.

In some paintings he has introduced the water buffalo, again drawn quite powerfully. He uses a splash of colour against a dark backdrop. So his paintings look bright and cheerful. That’s about all.

Gandhara Art gallery in association with the All India Institute of Medical Technologies is holding an exhibition titled Art for Life which seems to have been put together with whatever works the organisers could lay their hands on.

There are routine works by artists as diverse Jogen Chowdhury, Anjolie Ela Menon, Amitav Das and Suhas Roy, but the only ones that are worth consideration are by Kartik Pyne and Jaya Ganguly. However the noble the cause may be the organisers should have taken a little more care.

A rather pointless exhibition of photographs by Jasleen Patheja is on at 4 Satish Mukherjee Road. Organised by Tasveer, these photographs — if they deserve that appellation — seem to have been taken at random by Patheja, who according to her CV, is a trained photographer.

Photographs of mannequins, rows upon rows of clothes, frothy glasses of tea, close-ups of hairbrushes and cosmetics have been done to death.

The old woman holding a tomato to her nose, handling a mouse, and shots of what are generally called urban spaces are depressingly pedestrian.