Raghava KK returns to Chennai with an abstract exploration of identity, loss, and reinvention

There is simply a quiescent strength successful however creator Raghava KK speaks — portion philosopher, portion performer, and portion painter, unlearning everything helium erstwhile knew. His latest series, Figuring the Edge, astatine Ashvita’s, channels that tone done abstraction. This is simply a assemblage of enactment calved not from a narrative, but the undoing of it. 

For decades, Raghava has been known arsenic a storyteller who has blurred the boundaries betwixt creation and technology, and emotion and intellect. But here, helium steps distant from the communicative . “Stories marque america what we are,” helium says. “Stories are the origin of galore innovations and helped homo sapiens maestro the world; they are besides the root of overmuch destruction, truthful erstwhile you clasp connected to stories precise tightly, they break; I privation to amusement what happens erstwhile stories break.”

A fewer years ago, Raghava’s ain communicative broke. After 2 decades successful the US, collaborating crossed continents, his beingness collapsed erstwhile helium went done a divorce. “I was astatine the apical of my game, doing creation camps for Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos, past one went done a divorcement and suddenly, everything I thought was me, started falling apart,” helium says. “So I came backmost to India, to my mother, trying to marque consciousness of it all.” 

His brother, Karthik Kalyan Raman, a philosopher and economist, was going done a akin reckoning. “He began asking maine these questions — erstwhile the stories that marque you break, who are you?” These questions became the centre of Figuring the Edge— each enactment opening arsenic a written inquiry, past a sketch, and past a painting. “I spent 4 oregon 5 days conscionable writing, thinking, sketching. I person made hundreds of sketches earlier arriving astatine this. Each artwork is accompanied by a question, and the coating becomes the answer.” 

Thick impastos, shifting pigments, and restless strokes signifier the artworks connected the wall. “I wanted to make thing that allowed maine to reinvent myself done the process. After 30 years of painting, I felt the request to overgarment arsenic if I were starting each implicit again — to interruption each regularisation I person acceptable for myself and marque thing wholly new.”  The ‘edge’ successful the bid is simply a signifier of being. “While doing this series, I realised that artists are expected to unrecorded connected the borderline of society, we are ne'er designed for the centre, we are designed to propulsion the boundaries.”    

“The creation forms are unphotographable and lone uncover themselves erstwhile you basal infront of it These paintings inquire for time. They uncover themselves slowly, lone if you enactment with them. That’s wherefore I accidental my paintings are not images; they are similar people. As you determination closer, they amusement you their scratches and flaws. The chaos comes into focus. The nearer you get, you realise it’s each a beauteous benignant of mess.,” says Raghava.

Born into a Tamil Hindu household successful Bengaluru, raised successful a Muslim neighbourhood, and educated successful a Catholic school, Raghava’s creator travel is simply a multitude of perspectives. “I tin play my Christmas carols, sing the azaan, and besides bash my sandhya vandanam.” His canvases bespeak this multiplicity, and each spectator sees thing antithetic – a figure, a look oregon a landscape. 

With Figuring the Edge, the creator returns to the Chennai creation country aft 2 decades. His canvases crook into a tract of hostility —between assemblage and image, fig and ground. Through his abstract work, Raghava invites the assemblage to basal connected the borderline of creation itself and reinvent themselves. 

Figuring the Edge, is connected astatine Ashvita’s, Mylapore, till December 15, from 11am to 7pm, Monday to Friday. Entry free.