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Lot 77

 

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The dramatic use of light in T.V. Santhosh's art helps define his cinematic hyperrealism and the thought-provoking temper of his compositions. Santhosh belongs to a generation of artists that draws on media generated images to question both historical events as well as current issues. His works document with photograph-like precision the artist's observations and concerns.

"The adherence to the near-chromatic, often bichromatic tonal... The dramatic use of light in T.V. Santhosh's art helps define his cinematic hyperrealism and the thought-provoking temper of his compositions. Santhosh belongs to a generation of artists that draws on media generated images to question both historical events as well as current issues. His works document with photograph-like precision the artist's observations and concerns.

"The adherence to the near-chromatic, often bichromatic tonal scale is one of the firmest rules of Santhosh's pictorial game. It conveys the dramatic expressive strength of black-and-white cinema; in consequence, his paintings resemble stills extracted from old films, tinted and enhanced with additional material. Crucially, although he draws from diverse sources, Santhosh never organizes his paintings as palimpsests or collages; instead, he integrates the hybridity of their origins into amalgams, delivering each painting as a miniature reality, magically rendered more real than life" ("Transfigurations at the Margin of Blur", One Hand Clapping/Siren, the Guild Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, Mumbai, 2003, unpaginated).

In the present lot, titled How Far You Fly?, the viewer is struck by the image of a large migratory bird held in captivity. The wings of the bird, which appears to be an albatross, are being ‘spray-marked' – a method used to provide data on the population of a species and to help in identification during migratory pattern studies. The body language of the human figures in the composition comes across as indifferent towards the confined bird; the viewer can only see close-ups of gloved hands, arms and a torso of one of the subjects, and merely a shadowy outline of the other. Santhosh highlights the internment of the sedate albatross in human hands further by contrasting it with a white dove, fluttering in the distance, the universal symbol for freedom and peace.

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