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NOVEMBER 2016 | THE TIES THAT BIND
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T V SANTHOSH
(b. 1968)
Untitled
Signed 'TV Santhosh' and inscribed and dated
'T.V. SANTHOSH - 2008' (on the reverse)
2008
Oil on canvas
50.25 x 74.5 in (127.7 x 189 cm)
$ 30,000 - 40,000
Rs 19,80,000 - 26,40,000
PROVENANCE:
Christie's, New York, 15 September 2010, lot 354
T V Santhosh’s work is heavily inspired by cinema,
news media, art history and popular culture. He
explores violence in contemporary societal life
through solarised colour schemes referencing
photographic negatives. Focusing on globalised
terror and the ways in which people experience and
perceive forms of violence, his work engages with
the physicality of violence, scrutinising media-driven
images and the world’s consumption of them.
In Santhosh’s paintings, “Globalisation and
televisuality ensure that to view is to participate: the
ethical challenge is to accept the consequences of
such vicariousness in a remote controlled world of
passwords, smart bombs, heat-seeking missiles and
collateral damage. We are not looking at events, we
are looking at ourselves as we assess events, distribute
blame, identify locations and locate identities. The
image is the freight of elsewhere, mailed home to
the mind.” (Nancy Adajania and Baiju Parthan,
T V
Santhosh: Unresolved Stories
,
2004 – 2007,
Mumbai:
The Guild Art Gallery, 2007, p. 8)