Artist Raghava KK's latest exhibition in Chennai is all about the 'edge'

In Figuring the Edge, Raghava KK turns the canvas into a site of tension and touch—where the body meets the image, and the viewer becomes part of the work. The edge, for him, isn’t just a compositional boundary; it’s a philosophical one. “I believe that our role in society is to be the avant-garde, to be on the edge,” he says. “The edge is the line that separates the inside and the outside. It’s also the fringe of society.”

How this exhibition is more than just a cultural event for Raghava KK

For Raghava, this new exhibition marks more than a creative experiment—it’s a personal reckoning. “This is the first time I pushed myself beyond my art practice to create something new. It’s the first abstract series I’m displaying. It’s the edge between figure and abstraction. It’s the edge of my comfort zone,” he explains.

A multimedia artist known for his work with AI, technology, and storytelling, Raghava’s return to the physicality of paint feels like an act of renewal. His approach to these works is deliberately tactile and unphotographable. “I wanted the painting never to be an image because we have other things that create images. Meeting a painting for me is like meeting a person. You have to meet them to really understand them,” he explains.

Each layer of oil paint reveals a different kind of intimacy—what Raghava calls a “relationship with the audience”. From a distance, his works are magnetic; up close, they reveal blemishes, textures, and contradictions. “From every 10 steps towards it, it reveals something new. A good work of art is one that invites at least a second encounter, that beckons a second meeting,” he says.

Created during a period of personal transformation—marked by loss, reinvention, and reflection—Figuring the Edge is Raghava’s most vulnerable body of work yet. “While I was doing art events with Jeff Bezos and Oprah Winfrey, my personal life had turned upside down. I had to ask myself, when all these truths about me are breaking, what does remain that is worth believing in? I wanted to reinvent myself. And so the edge series was my way of completely looking at painting again” he shares.

Through impasto textures and meditative abstraction, Raghava explores what he calls “the three emotions that come with change—loss, liberation, and mystery.” To him, the edge is where transformation happens. “You simultaneously lose a part of who you are, but there’s also liberation and mystery. That’s what I want people to see—the edge as a powerful space for change and growth,” he says.

Open to all. On till December 15. Monday to Friday, 11 am – 7 pm. At Ashvita’s, Mylapore.

Email: apurva.p@newindianexpress.com

X: @appurvaa_

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