T.V. Santhosh

Born in 1968 in Kerala, T V Santhosh completed his Bachelor’s degree in fine art, specializing in sculpture, from Kalabhavan, Santiniketan, in 1994. He then studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of M.S. University, Baroda, completing his Master’s degree in the same there in 1997.

Heavily inspired by cinema, news media, art history and popular culture, Santhosh’s art is centered on the exploration of present-day crises. He uses images from print media, television and the internet to create eerily realist canvases replete with meaning that make strong statements about the general socio-political situation in India.

“The distinctive stylistic treatment, which makes Santhosh’s paintings recognizable without being predictable, subsumes three cardinal elements: first, a mode of representation that has erroneously been termed as photo-realism; second, a strict turning of chromatic scale; and third, an incremental transfiguration of the material, by degree and detail, that is all the more shocking for its unobtrusiveness” (Ranjit Hoskote, “Transfigurations at the Margin of Blur: Recent Paintings by T.V. Santhosh”, One Hand Clapping/Siren, The Guild Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2003, unpaginated).