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Sandhya Bordewekar, in a catalogue essay contributed to the forthcoming show titled ‘Rainbow of Imaginings’ by the Past Modern Gallery features seven artists who work with diversified mediums.

Here are three sculptors, three painters and one who is both -- in their temperament and approach to the practice and creation of art, each as dramatically different from the other as chalk and cheese. Unlike in most group shows, where a common theme, an idea or experience, often holds the displayed works of art together, this is an unusual show comprising benignly disparate subjects and a diversity of imagination, such that their very incongruency is what gently brings them all together in equal tension in the gallery space.

Bhupen Barman’s sculptures brush the realistic edge to hurtle into the magically real – a thoughtful monkey contemplates a tail that has a strange tale to tell; so does a pointer dog whose tail is perhaps speaking to a different kind of master. Then there is a stately stag, its flexed, lean muscles taut and rippling under its golden skin; closer inspection reveals that the handsome head of horns actually has treacherously open claws at the end – truly a deceitful Maricha. Bhupen’s sculptural language is like a murderously sharp, double-edged sword, and over the years he has steadily worked on it to make it even more precise and dramatic in its denouement.

Vinod A. Patel walks the sharp edge with his sculptures made from new, unused machine and automotive parts that he sources with diligence since he does not modify them to suit his needs. A passion about complicated shapes of insects and sundry creepy-crawlies that engaged him as a student is still alive, and Vinod highlights the complexity of their shape by magnifying them many times over. Polished and buffed metal stands cheek-by-jowl with engineering plastics, hand-carved wood, glass and mirror to create a quixotic assemblage that metamorphoses into an interesting and lively insect-like shape.

Deepak Khatri’s very appropriately titled ‘Assembly of Morsels’ showcases foodstuff such as fruits – apples, watermelons, bananas and so on. They are sliced, cubed or cut, in short ‘sculpted’ into ‘mouth-watering’ shapes as done by fruit vendors to attract customers. Deepak retains the general, identifiable shape of the ‘fruit’ he works on but then presents his own take on the same. The sliced banana, for instance, is riveted into a thick armour of its own skin; so is a grape as its armoured skin is slit on the surface to reveal the pulp inside. A large wooden watermelon is constructed as cubed pieces put back together and held in place by metal bands much in the manner of packed and sealed goods. In works titled ‘Construction of Imagination’ he takes the fruit-as-subject even further, methodically ‘de-constructing’ the organic object to its basic core.

Swarupa Shah, at ease both in the sculptural and painting media, returns to a book, ‘Forces of Nature’ as a source of inspiration for her collection of eight works on paper titled, ‘We are only Human’. These complex works are structured as a book would, with images cut into different sheets of paper and meticulously layered and over-painted. But Swarupa goes beyond paper to include textiles, faux fur, even hardened cotton wool found in old mattresses, as modes of image-making. Each work is separately titled as ‘Cover Page’, ‘Chapter One’ and so on, corresponding to those pages in the original book from which she draws her references. Swarupa’s works are deeply thought out, worked on a small format, superbly detailed and meaningfully sharp in her choice of every tiny element that goes into each work. Here she is looking at issues of evolution via biological and zoological detail from anthropomorphic and archaeological perspectives, of different ways of species propagation, even the idea of sparkling aliens.

These are surely some of Pulak Sanpui’s most evocative paintings. Though his trademark luxurious foliage is very much in evidence, the exotic palm fronds and colourful leaves now part to make way for some human habitation and presence. A ragged, abandoned doll lies almost unnoticed in a splurge of tropical blossom, a group of children gambol far away on the horizon framed by the tall palms in the foreground, a couple share a quiet tete a tete in a restaurant whose lobby appears like an exclusive greenhouse, a Hansel-and-Gretel duo appear to be plodding along a sinister forest path. But the most dramatic is the work where bright but sullen-looking sunflowers stand in a row like armed guards in the foreground dwarfing the house at the back, its small, timid resident almost like a prisoner behind the tall bar-like stalks of the flowers. Pulak’s works are now speaking; no longer are they dumb beauties.

Birds and winged angels delineate the subject of flight and the defying of gravity that Maneesha Doshi explores in the oils and water colours in this show. Over the last couple of years, Maneesha has been able to focus on, strengthen and sharpen her content in her paintings and the imagery to express it with, with much more clarity and seriousness of purpose. This is illustrated copiously in the sensuous “Voyage” and the celebratory “Rising Wings”, both works that form part of this exhibition. The dark waves lapping at the red boat in “Voyage” find their reflection in the grey darkness of the skies lit by sharp glints of moonlight.

Through the layers of patterned textures in his paintings, Ajay Sharma allows his images to play a continuous and convoluted game of hide-and-seek before the viewer can draw meaning from the visual material spread out like a feast. Some of Ajay’s works have an edge of satirical socio-political comment that finds voice in religious icons, images of Bollywood stars, media-inspired imagery, weapons of terrorism. For instance, in some paintings, there are references to Hanuman, sometimes in a satirical vein in works such as ‘Valentine Confessions’ or then as a symbolic whizzing-past tail-end that set the golden Lanka on fire. Ajay is also obsessed with imagery related to internal organs of human and animal figures that keep finding its way in his paintings.