Lot 504: T. V. SANTHOSH

T. V. SANTHOSH
(b. 1968)
Hundred Square Feet of Curses
signed, dated and titled 'T.V. Santhosh; 2005; Hundred Square Feet of Curses' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
137 x 183 cm. (54 x 72 in.)
Painted in 2005

N. Adajania and B. Parthan, T. V. Santhosh: Unresolved Stories 2004-2007, Mumbai, 2008 (illustrated, p. 75, p. 124).

Christie's Hong Kong Sale, May 27, 2007, Lot 509
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Hundred Square Feet of Curses (Lot 504) is an uncluttered composition replete with metaphors and social commentaries. It utilizes a photographic image in its negative state, which has come to characterize the style of T. V. Santhosh, and this inversion of the image contributes to the context and meaning of the work. Within his oeuvre, the artist grapples with the presence of injustice and violence in history allowing his subjects a much wider sphere of reference. The title refers to rehabilitation camps for victims of violence, specifically in connection with the riots of Godhra, Gujurat. As noted by the artist, the work indirectly refers to the narrow temporary sheds where victims lived with terrible memories of violent acts and the viewer is able to get a sense of ominous looming. Hundred Square Feet of Curses is only a glimpse of a much larger and ambiguous, though immediate, occurrence. The viewer is forced into a dialogue with the hands of an unspecified individual, rendered universal. These are clearly the hands of someone, but, in looking, the viewer cannot recognize any one person, but everyone. Via such visual irony, the artist creates a pictorial treatise on the fragile and potentially corruptible state of an individual in modern society.