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“COUNTDOWN”
T.V.
Santhosh
Preview:
9th – 11th January 2008
at The Guild, Mumbai.
Reception
with the artist – Wednesday 9th January 2008, 7.00 pm at The Guild
The
Guild Art Gallery is pleased to Preview a part of T V Santhosh’s
latest oeuvre of works in Mumbai from January 9th to 11th
08’. The full exhibition will be held at Nature Morte, Delhi
in collaboration with The Guild. T V Santhosh acquired his Bachelors
in Painting from the Visva Bharati University at Shantiniketan in 1994
and his Masters in Sculpture from the MS University in Baroda in 1997.
T.V.Santhosh has been part of several group shows in the United
States, India, Italy, UK and New York. Some of his most promising and
accomplished shows of the year 2007 are ‘YEAR 07’ London, SH
Contemporary, ’Continuity and Transformation’ Museum show promoted
by Provincia di Milano, Italy and ‘Aftershock’
at Sainsbury Centre, Contemporary Art Norwich, England in 2007.
T.V
Santhosh’s paintings have earned him front-place amongst the
generation of Indian artists that emerged during the late 1990’s. In
the earlier years Santhosh produced drawings and than moved over to
works with historical references. Then came images of war –
photographs of war have played a very significant role in formulating
Santhosh’s language and from there on he has also extended his
craftsmanship to sculpture. What strikes us immediately about
T.V.Santhosh is his grasp of the crises of our globalized present and
his taste for translating current events, even as they unfold. His
works can at first sight appear cryptic and contained, but a closer
examination reveals its provocative use of images, laid out for
viewing with seemingly deceptive ease. His art is attentive to the
specific idioms of contemporary global conflict, to the diabolical
pact between knowledge and terror and the skewed antagonism between
puissant globality and weakened locality.
One chooses to speak most extensively about the works of
Santhosh because of the manner in which he subverts the individual and
the received image to create a strong historical resonance.
About
his present body of works T.V. Santhosh says “ I still remember
vividly a dream that I had seen almost two decades before. Then, It
seemed a strange and cryptic dream, wherein I see myself running
frantically over a thick sea wall against the roaring sea, screaming
all the way saying “run, run, the end of world is near!” I could
see dark thunderclouds rolling over the horizon, turning the land
darker. It was a sleepy and remote village; people were yet to sense
the terrible heat of the breaking news .I could hear the clamor of
public announcement by taxies fitted with mikes, cutting across the
village cautioning a massive evacuation. I could see a tint of angst
already cast in the eyes of my childhood friends who were playing
pebbles in the street near the sea. Now, this dream does not
sound any more cryptic. I was probably playing a role of a weather
forecast man. These works titled “countdown’ reflects visions of a
weather man’s turbulent thoughts entangled with history of violence
and environmental politics. It is about the Scars of radiations and
Prophesies about an impending doom, where man’s real enemy is the
man himself.”
His
art is lucidly assertive and yet its significance is withheld,
allowing it to pool and cloud over in mystery. One can treat
his works as conceptualist devices intended to break down the simple
binaries through which we perceive our complex and multi-layered
environment. This distinctive stylistic treatment, which makes
Santhosh’s paintings recognizable without being predictable,
subsumes an incremental transfiguration of material, by degree and
detail, which makes it all the more shocking for its unobtrusiveness.
It is this mysterious undertone, which prevents Santhosh’s works
from being generic. As global elegies, annotations to an era of
epic-scale turbulence, his works are incomparably more resonant than
reportage. While they share the same subject matter, the treatment of
his works elevates them beyond limitations. Santhosh distances us from
everydayness by characterizing the present with means of a stylistic
treatment that plays up instabilities in his subject matter,
accentuates the dramatic potential, amplifies the portentous charge of
the events he describes and dreams of, thus invoking the unanticipated
at the heart of the apparent.
Santhosh’s
art has the drama of lighting with deft, which is not an instantly
discernible exaggeration of feature or situation, but helps define his
cinematic hyperrealism and the mood of his works. His use of a
panoramic and inclusive space partakes in melancholia and airiness,
where both the epic sweep and the intimate gesture maintain their
significance, without canceling each other out. T V Santhosh belongs
to a generation that must ask urgent questions of history, if it is to
survive a period intent on crushing the dissident spirit of inquiry
and resistance. His works are a striking materialization of
re-invigorated and vigilant history representations, which have
emerged as one of the dominant genres of contemporary Indian art in
recent years.
At
the turn of the 19th century, Baudelaire made a call to
young artists “ il faut etre de son temps”, which means, “to be
of their time”. T.V.Santhosh is one such artist. The artist lives
and works in Mumbai
The
show takes place at Nature Morte, Delhi, from January 24th to
February 16th in collaboration with The Guild.
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