Important Notice

Returning to sculpture, the field in which he was formally trained, after several years dedicated to painting, T.V. Santhosh has translated his concerns about violence and the nature of contemporary society to his recent installations. These stark fiberglass and LED works echo his lurid orange, yellow and green paintings in their juxtaposition of bands of glowing and scrolling red text with pristine white sculptural pieces.

In... Returning to sculpture, the field in which he was formally trained, after several years dedicated to painting, T.V. Santhosh has translated his concerns about violence and the nature of contemporary society to his recent installations. These stark fiberglass and LED works echo his lurid orange, yellow and green paintings in their juxtaposition of bands of glowing and scrolling red text with pristine white sculptural pieces.

In the present lot, titled Tracing Down the Path of Your Angst, the artist uses the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to draw attention to the nature of contemporary atrocities, and the fact that the majority of their perpetrators are ordinary individuals rather than malevolent geniuses. In a setting resembling the postwar tribunals, where World War II criminals were tried, Santhosh offers the poignant recollections of one of the survivors of the bombings, Yoshitaka Kawamoto, in a disturbing loop.

“Here a table draped in a starched sterile white tablecloth – still showing the creases from where it was folded – sits across from and perpendicular to a chair draped with a clean white sheet. Look closer – it is all a trick of the eye, rendered in smooth hard plastic or ceramic. The stage is set for what looks to be a hearing, although the panel of judges and the witness are either ghostly or gone: seven scrolling, digital red text boxes push the words of Yoshitaka Kawamoto from the solitary chair toward the table in a disorienting, out-of-synch flow. Facing the absent witness is another shiny, metal clock with a red digital face, counting down” (Alexander Keefe, “An Atomic Archive: Countdown by T.V. Santhosh at Nature Morte”, Jugaad, 25 January 2008, accessed November 2010).

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site