Sanghapal Morning light oil canvass 46x60 2025

 Hyperreal or hyper-real connotes an exaggerated appearance. For Sanghapal Uttam Mhaske, Delhi has been one for the last couple of years. Shifting from Mumbai to Delhi was a smooth transition initially but sooner than later Sanghapal found out that the city had some hyperreal tendencies, right from the layout to the behavior of the ‘citizens.’ Mumbai has been a maximum city even for Sanghapal but Delhi proved all his previous experiences with cities wrong and insignificant. In its hyperboles, exaggerations and distortions, Delhi, for Sanghapal, felt like an entity gone out of proportion. This exhibition is the result of his visual negotiations with the city of Delhi.

Sanghapal Uttam Mhaske is a flaneur of sorts, who walks the streets to find images that could effectively stand in for the image of the humans. Not that he despises the presence of humans but he takes pleasure in making the objects speak volumes about their own history as the history of those people who brought them into being and used them for various purposes. Having said that, whenever he paints objects from any other city, isn’t he painting this hyperreal city called Delhi? 

JohnyML

Art Historian

New Delhi