- 65
T. V. Santhosh
Estimate
20,000 - 30,000 GBP
bidding is closed
Description
- T. V. Santhosh
- A Survivor's Testimony
- Signed 'T V Santhosh' on reverse and further inscribed ' T.V. SANTHOSH-2009 / OIL ON CANVAS / SIZE: 4' x 6''
- Oil on canvas
- 122 x 183 cm. (48 x 72 in.)
- Painted in 2009
Provenance
Acquired from Grosvenor Gallery, London circa 2009
Christie's Hong Kong, 29 May 2011, lot 1424
Exhibited
London, Grosvenor Gallery, T.V. Santhosh: Living with a Wound, 7 - 27 February 2009
Literature
T.V. Santhosh: Living with a Wound, 7-27 February 2009, Exhibition Catalogue, Grosvenor Gallery, London, 2009, illustration p. 12
T.V. Santhosh: Blood and Spit Hung with a Wound a Room to Pray Countdown 13 October - 14 November 2009, Exhibition Catalogue, Jack Shainman Galꦬlery, The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai and New Yo🍸rk, 2009, illustration p. 38
G. Sinha, Voices of Change: 20 Indian Artists, Marg Publicaಌtions, Mumbai, 2010, illustrated p. 206
Catalogue Note
T.V. Santhosh has adopted a unique and striking painting technique that makes his work instantaneously recognisable. Choosing photographic imagery as his base, he solarises or reverses the images creating works that conjure the style of an x-ray or film negative. He frequently confronts issues of violence and injustice both today and throughout history in his paintings. Questioning the representation of war and terrorism in the media, Santhosh adopts a cynical view of the biases inherent in our current visual culture by appropriating references from such sources as magazines, newspapers and television. The influence of print media is reflected in the photographic quality of his works, both in their clarity and composition. Further, his signature use of hallucinogenic reds, yellows and greens gives the composition a tantalising effect.
"More recently, I have been appropriating in my works the logic of turning a positive photographic image into its negative. Negative images evoke the inverse aspects of the phenomena. As certain elements get deleted and become unrecognizable, they reveal an event's hidden implications. In the process, the elements of 'local' lose their specificity, attaining instead a universal significance and vice versa. Marking a shift from my earlier paintings and its linguistic concerns, which dealt with a world as seen through the pages of history that tells its stories through the images of metaphors, my recent works deals with the kind of devised 'glimpses' of a much larger, unresolved stories of immediate happenings..." (T.V. Santhosh - False Promises, Exhibition Catalogue, Grosvenor Gallery, London, November -December 2005, unpaginated).
"More recently, I have been appropriating in my works the logic of turning a positive photographic image into its negative. Negative images evoke the inverse aspects of the phenomena. As certain elements get deleted and become unrecognizable, they reveal an event's hidden implications. In the process, the elements of 'local' lose their specificity, attaining instead a universal significance and vice versa. Marking a shift from my earlier paintings and its linguistic concerns, which dealt with a world as seen through the pages of history that tells its stories through the images of metaphors, my recent works deals with the kind of devised 'glimpses' of a much larger, unresolved stories of immediate happenings..." (T.V. Santhosh - False Promises, Exhibition Catalogue, Grosvenor Gallery, London, November -December 2005, unpaginated).