Disturbing pictures of urban onslaught

It is the green politics and the disastrous onslaught of urbanizations that form the backbone of Murali Cheeroth’s paintings.
To be opened at Sumukha Galley here, on Friday, January 8, the show titled Habitus reflects a major transition in the creative oeuvre of this Bangalore-based artist.
With the urban images like flyovers, cranes and traffic signals Murali tells about the so-called development that tears down the equilibrium of earth.
There are certain images like the displaced statues, which underscore the pain of development. It also points to the way we turn away from history. The statue with three hands holding gun in one and green grass in another depicts harsher political reality of our time – of peace and violence.
On the other hand, the image of a displaced tiger in search of a habitat, further takes us to the eco-politics of the works presented in this show.
The hapless human beings struggling for their existence in the urban hullabaloo reflects a nightmarish reality of the age of urbanization. The men hanging like a circus artists and the crane reminding us of some wild beast draw the unpleasant portrait of the urban onslaught. And it is this onslaught, which is being reflected in the image of the electric bulb, that has become another recurrent image in Murali’s recent paintings.