THE UNRULY SYNTAX

Ravikumar Kashi’s work process and methodologies inspire one to picture him in the garb of an artist-archaeologist: he metaphorically digs through layers, deciphering contexts; he persistently builds anthropological relationships with material culture as his guide; and refers to language and lexicons of meaning as a tool to map everyday culture. The City, in all its beauty and ugliness, its plainness and complexity, is his site of research. It is an entity in constant flux, shifting its skins and morphing its inhabitants - it is a site that has yielded many stories to him, and continues to be his playground for experimentation. The symbolic visual vocabulary in Kashi’s paintings represent a host of narratives, an abundance of subtexts, and an active engagement with paradox. The signs act as triggers for heterogenous ideas and interpretations, at times deliberately skirting publicly sensitive subjects or controversy. With subtle irony, Kashi highlights the contrasts and extremes of our current times. Each picture plane becomes a radical space for negotiating the complexities of socio-cultural, political, economic, ecological and spiritual layers of urban living.

‘The Unruly Syntax’ allows for a slow unravelling of concepts and secrets that the paintings offer. As with all of Kashi’s works, they bring with them a multiplicity of tangible and intangible experiences, and an open window into altered worlds. Each time a skin is shed, a new one takes its place.

-Lina Vincent 2021