India Art Fair 2012 in a nutshell: Usual contemporary art suspects galore — black paint splashed on canvas, passport portrait series or a video installation that documented people’s discomfort in using their other hand to do regular chores (a right-hander applying makeup with left hand, for instance)… Amidst them a few unusual prospects that either made you laugh with their incongruity (ahem; check out Heri Dono’s Two Cowboys Discuss Their Weapons) or shake your head in wonder (Belgian artist Wim Delvoye has turned the stunning gothic architecture of Cologne cathedral into an even more stunning Dump Truck).

So we ran from tent to tent, four in all, hunting down the unusual kind — pausing en route to pay homage to great masters such as VS Gaitonde (his oh-so-delicate colours and texture bring out the introspectiveness in you) and Hiroshi Senju (the waterfall, cascading in shimmery white on grey background could immediately transport you to a place where only peace prevails, never mind the milling crowd around you) — before rushing back to meet the deadline. Two hours in all.

We met Bangalore-based Ravikumar Kashi when we were admiring his installation art of protruding red tongues. The down-to-earth artist, who works extensively with paper pulp, is only happy to flip a tongue to show you how he fixed it to the wall. He discusses recession with equal ease — apparently, he’s gone back to teaching, as living on art alone is getting trickier.

Down the corridor is South Korean contemporary artist Choi Tae Hoon’s poetry in steel. He moulds steel sheets into different shapes (on display here are a pair of boots and a jacket hung on a coat stand), plasma torching to make holes in the steel plate. Stunning. Italian artist Alessandro Papetti stops you in your tracks with his paintings that convey a sense of hectic activity. Just check out his Milano, you’ll know what we are talking about.

Little ahead, Delhi-based artist Manjunath Kamath has taken our everyday objects and turned them into objets d’art. So tiny washbasin sprouts black mountains, toy version of Sintex water tank sits proudly on an installation, tiny fibreglass bathtub sits on fibreglass balloons… Kamath has also explored every medium possible. His watercolour animation of everyday things was quite a crowd puller.

Pakistani Rashid Rana is another artist who has taken the ordinary to an extraordinary place. His Language series is a collage of thousands of close-up shots of advertising shields and name boards of shops found on the streets of Lahore that is shaped into a larger-than-life composite image. So impressive it is that it takes a while for the bigger picture to emerge: You need to get up close to see his message.

It again takes a while to get what French artist Mathieu Bernard-Reymond is driving at when you look at his Monuments series. Black and white pictures in interesting angles. So. And then you realise he has used 3D software and created approximate shapes and structures of financial charts and data, as inane as interest income comparison, and integrated in landscapes close to memorials or monumental sculptures. What you see is actually not what you see.

If we had more time, we would definitely have retraced our way. Perhaps, we did miss a few finer points along the corridor!