One look at Prema Murthy’s latest body of work—three dimensional lines “drawn” with black yarn that intersect like the weave of a spider’s web; black-and-white compositions on paper made up of grid-like shapes and forms -- and viewers might first believe them to be ultra-minimalist, utterly spare. But beneath the elegant simplicity of Murthy’s lines, in either two or three dimensions, is a complex system of references, histories, mysteries, and ideas.
Where to begin? On the surface. Yes, Murthy’s installation at Tamarind looks like a hand-made, giant net. (It echoes an earlier installation at the artist’s solo show at PS 1, a contemporary art space that is an affiliate of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.) It is perhaps a surprising sight for followers of Murthy’s work through the years, as she received her first recognition by critics and curators for her new-media pieces in the 1990s. Yet Murthy’s latest installation, Organizing Energy, seems to be the antithesis of “new media art,” the opposite of the digital—at least on the surface. Yes, the installation was made by hand, and in the very basic, very physical medium of yarn. As the critic Swapna Vora describes Murthy’s yarn-based installations, the work can conjure many different interpretations, depending on the viewer’s own points of reference:
“Delicate it is like a spider’s web, this sketch of the worldwide web of our collective thoughts. Skinny skeins of black wool stretch into space, a cat’s cradle. Black wool is knotted simply at intervals forming a playful, simple structure which reminds one of outer space, the interior of a crystal with many squares, triangles perhaps representing the wires which connect our lives to ourselves, to others, to space itself. They pierce the wall and spill outside the delineated room.”
