In Ravi Kashi’s Bangalore studio, paper takes on unexpected lives. Draped, woven, folded, it recalls cloth, skin-like in its thinness, appearing fragile, yet in form remarkably resilient. These works, born of pulp dripping onto thin polyester sheets, are traces of the artist’s mindspace: each undulation and crease recording a rhythm of attention, gesture, and thought. 

For over a decade, paper has been central to Kashi’s practice. “I work with paper, not on paper,” he says, highlighting his engagement with the medium as sculptural, expressive, and generative. Letters and words, often in Kannada, appear less as messages than as companions—friends to be nurtured, remembered, and held close. Script dissolves legibility, foregrounding form, material, and gesture; paper becomes text, text becomes form, creating a multisensory experience that emphasizes the fluidity of meaning and matter.

Kashi’s works evoke the body, membranes, and cellular structures. Language becomes a porous identity for the self, and paper mirrors the vulnerability and breath of body and word alike. Colours drawn from Bangalore, deep rusts and muted greens, act as recollections, fragments of place held in memory. Presence, too, is relational: echoes of Krishna Reddy or Akbar Padamsee appear as companions in ongoing dialogues, hinting at the continuity of artistic practices.

These works inhabit impermanence. Meaning slips, language fades, paper frays, and yet in their fragility lies endurance. Books, notebooks, and pages act as keys, linking works into networks that are relational and expansive.

Shadows of Breath invites viewers to linger in the ephemeral, to dwell in suggestion rather than certainty, and to experience intimacy through attunement. Fragile yet resilient, porous yet present, these works are second skins: companions, traces, and fleeting presences that endure precisely by yielding.

– Dr. Arnika Ahldag

  Director of Exhibitions & Curation

  The Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), Bangalore