“Surrealism is an expression of one’s creativity, of what one feels. Our ancient history is replete with images that are surrealist in nature from Durga’s ten arms, to Ganesh’s depiction of the elephant God atop a human body. Even the third eye is a surrealist expression,” says Professor Sovon Som, who curated the exhibition. The exhibition, however, dealt with the works of contemporary artists, the oldest being Hemanta Mitra born in 1917, and youngest being Ajay Kumar Sharma who was born in 1986. “The exhibition was not just about experiments done in Bengal but from across the country. Therefore, we included names like Norman Tagore from Goa, K Muralidharan from Kerela and Simanta Jyoti Baruah from Assam,” says Som.

Often obtruse, many of the works focus on human drama. For example, Tagore’s ‘Heartbreak’ almost literally paints a broken heart. Created with ink and charcoal, it showed the silhouette of a figure whose heart is being poked by iron spokes. Tagore’s heartbreak is not just a mental or emotional pain; rather it is a physical trauma. Again his ‘Manjunath’ is the silhouette of an ordinary man; a man lost in the masses, probably a non-entity yet having his own identity. Then there is Asit Mondal’s ‘The Dreaming Shepherd’. Mondal’s figure may resemble a real-life shepherd but his flocks are more fantasy than real. The sheep for him exist in his dream world, in contrast to his profession. And then there is Ganesh Pyne’s ‘Jottings’ — a doodle of abstract thoughts and ruminations on a graph paper. From abstract figures done in ink, to Henry David Thoreau and Giselle Breteto’s quotes and disconnected meanderings, Pyne’s work is a reflection of his mind while at work.

Dipali Bhattacharya’s ‘untitled’ works were a part of a series that she had done on her mother. Though just two of them were on exhibit, they focused on the times when her mother was alive. While one of the paintings is a tribute to her memory, the other juxtaposes the painter’s mother against a tide of events as portrayed by marching people and balustrades of an old house. Another striking work was Diptish Ghosh Dastidar’s ‘When She Started Smiling’, a contemplation on a desire to see Monalisa smile, a feat achieved by Michelangelo’s David who steps out of pedestal.