Tamarind Arts Council is pleased to announce “Organizing Energy”, a solo exhibition by Prema Murthy. Prema Murthy blends organic, hand-drawn lines with modern digital forms through the use of computer software. Her webs are complex arrangements used to represent a synthesis of the old and the new, the pre-modern and the computer age.

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. Although the art work seems extremely low-tech, Murthy based the compositions on digitally rendered shapes she created with sophisticated software programs usually used to model realistic imagery for commercial films. Programmers use these computer applications to render bodies and objects that appear round and soft, or flat and hard, or angular and sharp, when viewed on a screen. When programmers and designers are creating these believable images, they first model the shapes in grids made up of lines, and then fill them in with colors and textures.

Murthy has exhibited her video, prints and installations in the US and abroad, including a solo exhibition in June 2007 at the PS1/MoMA Contemporary Art Center in New York, which was made possible by Tamarind Art and Marguerite and Kent Charugundlas. Murthy is also the co-founder of the collective Fakeshop, which was included in the Whitney Biennial in 2000. Murthy’s work explores the webs that bridge the natural and man-made worlds. Her work is inspired by the thought of dynamic systems and their changing forms.