Contrasting manifestations of internal artistic realms

New Delhi based Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre presented an interesting group show, entitled ‘Surviving Sagas’ earlier this month – courtesy Ashna Gallery. Here is the gallery note on artists Gopinath and Murali Cheeroth.

In Gopinath we see a beautiful convergence of existential angst of contemporary man as well as his alerted political awareness. His sculptures emulate small little worlds where human beings build up their dream existences. He has a special way of emulating the classical sculptures in a contemporary medium of fiberglass and giving a meaningful twist by incorporating abstract and surreal figurative values to them. In this show, The artist thinks more towards generating a discourse based on the intellectual existence vis-à-vis his responses to the world ridden with violence and strife.

On the other hand, in Murali Cheeroth’s works what you witness is the manifestation of such internal worlds, which the artist very skillfully presents with all the paraphernalia of the outer world of reality. Murali subscribes to the images from daily life, as seen in city squares and construction sites. For him, city is like a language with an ever changing structure. The flux of structure is always tested against the imaginary structures that the artist creates within his inner world. Hence, the architectural images and the images of construction sites that we see in his works are not the images from an actual world. They are constructed realities within the artist’s mind.

Seen against an industrial landscape, he introduces an interface between two mechanisms; one the brutal force of an earthmover that helps in clearing the spaces for further constructions and the dead weight of a disused car, almost hung in the middle of the air. This world of spectacle that the artist deliberately creates moves between the real ‘real’ and the imagined ‘real’. Discounting people from the scenario of a spectacular drama is an artistic ploy that he uses to collapse the boundaries of two worlds.

By creating a world that looks almost similar to the hegemonic world, Murali Cheeroth incepts the idea of resistance within the system of powers. The lonely deer that strays into a suburban landscape becomes a powerful imagery as seen contrasted with the image of the radar that captures the frequencies of dreams.

(Information courtesy: Ashna Gallery, New Delhi)