T.V. Santhosh Your Terrorist, Our Freedom Fighter 2004 Diptych: oil on canvas. 152.5 x 244 cm (60 x 96 in). Signed ‘TV Santhosh’ on the reverse of each panel.
Provenance Private Collection, New Delhi Catalogue Essay A Santhosh canvas is easily distinguishable. Most of them look like photographic negatives where specific details of a face or an object have been largely erased. What remains is the basic structure or outline – reminiscent of the works of the renowned American painter-photographer Man Ray. As the details get deleted, the event’s hidden implications surface; the local loses its specificity, making way for the universal to come to the fore. In Your Terrorist, Our Freedom Fighter, he paints the same man twice, side by side, his face covered by a cloth and hands above the head, surrendering to his captors. The two figures receive different treatment – one has deep hues of green and red; the other is lost, almost distorted, in a mix of neon green and pink. The work questions the ambiguities inherent in notions of right and wrong, enemy and victim, evil and innocent: ambiguities that the media tends to paper over. Irony is integral to Santhosh’s dialectic. “It is the only way to deal with the unresolved nature of the happenings around the world today,” he says. (Sanjukta Sharma, ‘The art of war’) Read More
T.V. Santhosh Your Terrorist, Our Freedom Fighter 2004 Diptych: oil on canvas. 152.5 x 244 cm (60 x 96 in). Signed ‘TV Santhosh’ on the reverse of each panel.
Provenance Private Collection, New Delhi Catalogue Essay A Santhosh canvas is easily distinguishable. Most of them look like photographic negatives where specific details of a face or an object have been largely erased. What remains is the basic structure or outline – reminiscent of the works of the renowned American painter-photographer Man Ray. As the details get deleted, the event’s hidden implications surface; the local loses its specificity, making way for the universal to come to the fore. In Your Terrorist, Our Freedom Fighter, he paints the same man twice, side by side, his face covered by a cloth and hands above the head, surrendering to his captors. The two figures receive different treatment – one has deep hues of green and red; the other is lost, almost distorted, in a mix of neon green and pink. The work questions the ambiguities inherent in notions of right and wrong, enemy and victim, evil and innocent: ambiguities that the media tends to paper over. Irony is integral to Santhosh’s dialectic. “It is the only way to deal with the unresolved nature of the happenings around the world today,” he says. (Sanjukta Sharma, ‘The art of war’) Read More
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