At a glance
■ “Visions from India” continues through Oct. 28 at the Pizzuti Collection, 632 N. Park St. Hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Call 614-280-4004, or visit www. pizzuticollection.org. Admission: $12, or $10 for senior citizens, free for members, students and children. “Transforming Vision” are the sculptures of Sudarshan Shetty. A life-sized work in carved wood, “For All That We Lose,” resembles an ornate gazebo: A pair of passageways are surrounded by wood cut into the shapes of vines and flowers. Inside is a swinging — and altogether lethal-looking — steel sword. The work is both playful and macabre.
Also imaginative is A. Balasubramaniam’s “Self in Progress,” in which a wall separates two halves of a man seated in a chair. To the right of the wall, the figure’s back and upper arms are visible, while to the left, his legs and bare feet emerge. His face? It’s somewhere inside that wall.
Bharti Kher’s triptych “Landscape” consists of innumerable red, arrow-shaped bindis bunched together or spread out on green and blue backgrounds, while Subodh Gupta’s “Untitled” features an operational conveyor belt — originally used by customers in a sushi restaurant — on which alternately gleaming and dull tiffin boxes circulate. (Kher and Gupta are married.)
Starkly rendered in shades of gray, Krishnaraj Chonat’s charcoal-and-pastelon“Belly” depicts a young girl clutching an empty bowl; her expression reflects a state of hunger, as do the twisty roots beneath the ground. Painted in somber tones, Jagannath Panda’s acrylic-and-fabricon“The Icon” presents a bronze statue of Mahatma Gandhi that has seen better days — it has become home to a flock of birds.
“The Progressive Master” offers an overview of works by Souza, whose blocky, cubistinflected approach was frequently likened to that of Pablo Picasso. Especially memorable is “Face,” in which black lines evoke the contours of a human face; the artist’s odd touches include one eye tipped on its side and a ladder-like shape to represent a row of teeth.
Reared in the Catholic Church, Souza painted striking, often troubling pieces on religious themes, including “Christ on a Cross” and “Last Supper.” In the latter work, Jesus and the apostles are seen in the expected arrangement — echoing Leonardo da Vinci — but with their faces blanked out or painted-over.
“New York Skyline” surprises for its title: The gobs of yellow, blue and green suggest a forest more than a cityscape. On the other hand, “Still Life” offers the familiar pleasures of a gold vase holding a flowering plant. A single leaf has fallen to the table below — a wonderfully melancholy detail.