Prema Murthy

CEREMONY Solo Exhibition, June 2023

at FORMah, NY

“In this exhibition of new work by Prema Murthy, a series of quiet and meditative canvases distills the artist’s ongoing, syncretic explorations in abstraction. The subtle poetry of her work leaves room for the viewer’s interpretation, and lingers in one’s consciousness long after beholding them. Murthy’s paintings draw inspiration from empirical methods of cognition in physics and mathematics, as well as from metaphysical themes of the sacred and the eternal. This combination of formal minimalism and a highly nuanced approach to her materials evokes a sense of internal silence and contemplation, thus providing the necessary arena for what Hannah Arendt once described as the “soundless dialogue between me and myself” (“Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture,” Social Research vol. 38, no. 3 [1971]: 434). It is a space where rigid axioms are disintegrated, and elasticity espoused.”

excerpt from catalog essay by Jenny Mushkin Goldman, Curator