The 43rd annual exhibition at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture was on for three weeks in January. It was an enormous exhibition spread across four floors. I made two trips and still wanted to visit it again. The quality of works at the Birla annual show has steadily improved.

There were a number of awardees. Sujit Das’ Being in Trouble showed a large hand with two fingers like scissors — film buffs will immediately remember the film on scissorhands. It also had Kaushik Raha’s water colour Citiscape and Kalyan Chakrabarty’s Indian style image of Shiva cavorting with a bunch of young ladies. I liked Manidipa Saha’s Woman Born for Love and Bond. The use of stamped paper lent an interesting touch.

Popcorn was chosen by two artists as a fitting choice of today’s young people. Sayantani Datta’s work, titled Timepass, was an etching. It shows popcorn in a newspaper cone against the Kolkata skyline. While Manash Saha shows a packet of popcorn, just as it is sold in cinema halls. His painting, titled The Magical Food, is shown against the backdrop of clouds.

Near the entrance on the top floor, there was a really striking sculpture titled Thinker. Created by Amit Kumar Debnath, there was no chance of anyone passing without looking at this large mass of wood.

Shyamkanu Borothankur’s bronze, The Wild Boar, was a humourous depiction that anyone would enjoy looking at. There was an interesting piece titled Banaras complete with ghat, steps, people and umbrellas, by Partho Datta. The head of a prehistoric monster complete with huge teeth created by Amit Dey and aptly titled 10,000 was totally different from other works.

There were also well known painters works that were immediately recognisable. Shuvaprasanna’s Owl has become a familiar image these days, as has Vaikuntham’s Three Women. Which is not to say that I do not like them, in fact, I would go as far as saying these are works that I could live with. Sunil Das was also there, but in a totally different style. I have say that I really enjoyed seeing his huge white canvases with horses, but change is inevitable. Others that I enjoyed seeing were Jahangir Sabavala’s two serigraphs and Swapan Kumar Das’ Tea Adda, showing a teapot and mugs. Isha Mahammad’s The Magician & Aladin in an illustrative style was interesting, while Rajeshwar Rao’s From Lanka to Poland, was humorous wherein Hanuman was depicted in modern clothes and shown flying over a city — no doubt in Poland. But to see which direction art is taking these days, we need to see Chandra Nath Saha’s Portrait of an Artist. The artist has shown us what is actually happening — compact discs have now become inseparable from an artist! In his work, Saha paints the artist’s face on a large compact disc.

The writer is a painter and has won numerous adveritising design awards