THE SECOND edition of the India Art Summit was held at Pragati Maidan from August 19 to the 22nd. Modelled on the International Art Fair, the summit featured works held by local galleries (Vadhera, Sakshi, Bodhi) along with that of Lisson of London and Aicon of New York. A useful shuttle service ferried visitors from the entrance of Pragati Maidan to the venue of the summit where they encountered the first set of installations in the brief open air space. Here, a handful of installations sat around for visitors to consider (the compelling 'Broken Donkey Cart' by G R Iranna and Ravinder Reddy's 'Head') before the visitors chuted through the metal detectors to the closed foyer and the larger exhibition area in a covered space.

The foyer carried the faux (possibly) verdigris licked, utensil-stacked pieces of Subodh Gupta's 'Gandhi's Three Monkeys'. The visitors could then start their trot through any of the three openings. Moving left, we noted a painting of a recumbent Buddha, 'Compassion' by Aparna Caur faced by the more clinically realised photo-realist 'Onions I', 'Onions II' and 'Onions III' by Paul S Brown. There were the 3-D mechanistic framed creations of R Baala - 'Vibration transmitted by radiation - pulse of artificiality and nature'. There were violons suspended in globs of plastic - 'Violonelle Sable Rouge' by Franck Tordjmann. There were Dganit Blencher's mixed technique works of tired pop culture icons, James Dean ('Oh James'), Mick Jagger ('Mick Jagger'), Marilyn Monroe ('Glamour'), and Audrey Hepburn ('Breakfast at Tiffanys').

Catching the eye
What caught my eye and jogged the instinct for making connections with things history taught or that the media had reported before, were a few pieces from Rohit Chawla's 'Tribute to Raja Ravi Varma', a collection of works by FN Souza and what seemed like a miniature of Anish Kapoor's Sky Mirror, 'Untitled 2009' in stainless steel and lacquer. Situated close to the mirror was Julian Opie's 'View of Lake Motosu and Mount Fiji from Route 300, 2007'.

If anything jogged the instinct it had to be Om Soorya's 'Twilight - eternal', pieces that are probably meant to bring to mind Hieronymus Bosch's triptych Garden of Earthly Delights. What definitely caught a lot of attention was Manjunath Kamath's grand creation 'Over Dose' (digital print on archival paper) - a magnetic piece depicting the cross section of a multi-level home (who would not want to spy on something like that) with its rooms peopled with recognisable figures and elements from Western art and a lot of kitsch. There's Duchamp's urinal somewhere there and an instructive scene from the Kama Sutra critically eclipsed by an edge of wall from another room.

Conspicuous by its absence, were the works of the iconic Indian artist, MF Husain. The show's curator decided that the exhibition of his works of Indian gods would invite the ire of some right wing political groups, jeopardising and probably hijacking the rest of the summit in the process.

Click here for photo gallery of images taken at the India Art Summit 2009.

(In picture: Manil Gupta's 'The Rehabilitation Plan – Option 1' as pictured at the India Art Summit 2009)