Ragini Bhow

August 13, 2024

Ragini Bhow (b. 1991, Minneapolis, MN, raised in Bangalore, India) is a painter and sculptor based in Brooklyn, New York. She holds a BFA from the University of Minnesota and an MFA from the University of New Mexico. Recent solo exhibitions include François Ghebaly, New York; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, New York; and Rubber Factory, New York. Recent group exhibitions include François Ghebaly, Los Angeles; Jack Barrett Gallery, New York; Charles Moffett Gallery, New York; Island Gallery, New York; Kleine-Humboldt Galerie, Berlin; Galerie Mirchandani & Steinruecke, Mumbai; UNM Art Museum, Albuquerque; and Gallery SKE, Bangalore.

Can you tell us about your practice?

I work between painting and sculpture. My practice is driven by exploring the connection to the life force of materials, not only physical but also what extends beyond. It is a relational and intuitive process.

You’ve mentioned that intuition is a guide for your works – is there ever a tension between having a fully formed image in mind and being in the moment?

I don’t work from a completely formed image, there are often drawings or compositions I’m holding visually as I begin a work but they aren’t fully crystallized. The images emerge as I move, and each decision made, affects the succeeding, it’s important for me to feel surprised by the work.

How do you get into the headspace of letting your intuition take over?

Quieting the mind. Holding attention. Meditating daily. Setting boundaries in the studio space is important too. It is tough to maintain that rhythm, especially in the city, but that challenge is interesting to me and what it does to the work formally. There has been a lot of stretching, velocity, magnetism, and tension in recent works.

You mentioned that you create your own pigments. What draws you to this approach, and how does it lead to the use of dark blues and blacks in your palette?

The preparation of material is a ceremonial practice. I’m connected to the pigments from their origin, and mindful of the elements going into their composition. Incorporating ground crystals, stones, and other found organic materials allows me to create unique properties that have specific physical and metaphysical qualities. My current fascination with blue on black is perceptually driven, by how the colors engage dynamically with one another – never static, like when your eyes adjust to darkness and the colors/images change the longer you look at them. This emerged from my experiences of wandering the desert at night in India.

There is an interesting play between the microcosms revealed in your paintings and the macroscopic scale of your sculptures. What conversation are you having when you work across these mediums?

Everything is interconnected and circular between the mediums. I see them as iterations representing varying states and studies of similar ecological phenomena and entities such as birth, decay, fossilization, and germination, but also dark matter, atomic reactions, and the unknown. There are references to the biological but also celestial, I’m interested in that duality and the mirroring between scales.

Can you tell us a little about your hearth vessel series? What is the importance of fire in your practice?

I am drawn by the transformative quality of fire and what caring for it teaches us. I was raised with a deep connection to fire. My first sculptures that held fire were inspired by the earthen hearths ‘chulhas’ back home made from mud and used for cooking, they belong to the central heart of the home, a site of storytelling and nourishment. The sculptures I’ve made become ritualistic vessels for healing processes, sometimes involving close friends and family to participate in the ceremonial burnings. I’ve been collecting ash from these fires for many years and incorporating it in pigments and installations. Ash holds memory but it is so delicate and ephemeral in nature. I am interested in how it speaks to impermanence, but also regeneration. There are fire-responsive seeds that need fire to germinate and ash is used as a common fertilizer in gardening. Fire and its ash are a perfect representation of the harmony between creation and destruction.

Ragini Bhow

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