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Lot 129

 

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Initially trained as a sculptor, T. V. Santhosh turned to painting only recently. Like many of his contemporaries, Santhosh draws the inspiration for his almost realistic images from the streaming media flows that create and support our present notions of truth and reality. The artist’s canvases, however, transform these images into arresting comments about our times, where violence is abetted by technology, and power, especially in the global... Initially trained as a sculptor, T. V. Santhosh turned to painting only recently. Like many of his contemporaries, Santhosh draws the inspiration for his almost realistic images from the streaming media flows that create and support our present notions of truth and reality. The artist’s canvases, however, transform these images into arresting comments about our times, where violence is abetted by technology, and power, especially in the global media industry, is irresponsibly wielded and abused on a regular basis.

According to Ranjit Hoskote, the elusive narratives embedded in Santhosh’s paintings lie somewhere between history and myth, forewarning of the terrible consequences of our current sociopolitical trajectory. Deeply affected by war and other “crises of our globalised present”, Santhosh’s “is an art attentive to the specific idioms of contemporary global conflict, to the diabolical pact between knowledge and terror, the skewed antagonism between puissant globality and weakened locality” (Transfigurations at the Margin of Blur, One Hand Clapping / Siren, The Guild Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2003, unpaginated).

In the present lot, an eerily fluorescent and softly-focused depiction of various types of prosthetic legs, Santhosh uses his thermographic, x-ray like imagery to push viewers into contemplating both the violence and benefits of science and weighing them against each other. On one hand, undetectable landmines developed in laboratories blow off the legs of innocents worlds away, on the other, advanced medical technology helps replace these lost limbs with functional robotic prosthetics. In the artist’s book, however, offering a band-aid solution for an involuntary amputation clearly does not even come close to balancing the scales for technology.

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