In his 2014 essay, Ranjit Hoskote notes that, "Samanta’s paintings are a laboratory for the staging of enigmatic events. Here, the artist tests the balance between object and emptiness; here, also, gravity and flight contest one another’s claims. Intriguingly, given that his is primarily a painterly practice, Samanta demonstrates formal pre- occupations that might seem more germane to the sculptor’s domain. He addresses the binaries of volume and void, relief and surface, container and content, in his paintings as well as in his more properly sculptural engagement with altered or recycled books"