Casey Kaplan

For Frieze New York 2024, Casey Kaplan is pleased to present a solo presentation of new paintings by Kaveri Raina (b. 1990, New Delhi, India; lives and works in New York, NY).

Kaveri Raina’s paintings unravel a visceral response to recollections of the past. Acrylic, graphite, and oil pastel are applied with fervor across sewn and stretched burlap, forming scenes of dislocated bodies that hover in search of equilibrium. Through thick fields of paint and swirling graphite, Raina intersects her own beginnings with the deep-rooted stories of heroines originating from India’s colonial and more recent histories. Densely painted silhouettes of shifting landscapes and suspended bodies carry the weight of memory, enlisting the viewer as witness to a developing story.

The cyclical journey of recollection is mapped through bold color and abstracted form, conveying a somatic response to displacement. Raina’s machine-like shapes of anthropomorphic tools and bodies resting within boxes, inspired by the works of Lee Bontecou, Leon Golub, and Lee Lozano, are rendered with tension. A cyclone of mechanical activity erupts in the fluttering of the 'Insides'; keep it well greased to function smoothly (2024). Clouds of graphite and oil pastel whirl with intensity, like a clash of opposing forces. A pair of scissors tangled in a crowd of bodies traverse a warrior scene in seeing clearly ahead; plunge (2024), configured with two burlap panels that differ in orientation.

Raina’s largest work to-date, the kingdom, the cave, the beginning, and the sun shining through the haystacks (2024), reads as cinematic sequences - a linear progression of figures is propelled by vigorous gestures of graphite and oil pastel (in the far-left corner), functioning as an engine for the torrent of narratives that follow. A kingdom unfolds; reoccurring characters from previous works are reanimated in an underwater scape. Newly introduced figures, detached and never fully realized, materialize in a frenzy of motion. A headless sea-maiden floats above a pair of black boots worn by legs that lead to nowhere. Beyond the seam of the two canvases, limbs congealed in acrylic are anchored within a box and sheltered by a hay-thatched roof.

Each painting holds its own narration, as if a companion piece to a larger story. In levitating; push the walls, the heart, the growth out with my elbows (2024), a pair of hazy legs dominate the composition. Purple paint pushed from the work’s verso clots on the fibers of the woven surface. An orbit of vessels, blobs, and limbs pulsate and beat like organs. Tragic tales appear in fragments of growth and destruction, unearthing the lives that came before in commemoration.