Brenna Murphy

Recalling images from natural geometries, psychedelia, and various mystic traditions, Brenna Murphy’s digital geographies describe vast inner and outer spaces made visible in staggering detail by the computer programs she employs. A student of the Raga Scales, Murphy’s images, objects, and installations are visual equivalents to this ancient Indian musical tradition. Raga, literally “color,” “hue,” as well as “beauty,” is a set of rules describing how to build a melody. The rules dictate which notes to use, which to use more sparingly, which notes must be bent, which ones may be bent, how to slide from one note to another, and so on. It is a precise framework built to compose and improvise melodies where each Raga is clearly recognizable yet allows for endless variation.

The 3D rendered objects used to build Murphy’s work are analogous to the notes within a Raga scale; a vocabulary of form and color used to compose infinitely complex and fluid compositions, both ordered and improvised. She uses this vocabulary across media, building objects within virtual environments, flattening them within two dimensional picture planes, fabricating them via 3D printing, and using them as schematics in the creation of handmade objects. Her web-based projects are all connected, and serve as a repository and waypoint for the images and textures generated in her practice. The architecture of this network is organic, describing lineages and inviting exploration.

Murphy has shown in a number of solo and group exhibitions including Yerba Buena Center, San Francisco, Kunstverein Dusseldorf, Klaus von Nichtsaagend Gallery, NY, Bitforms, New York, and Kunsthalle m3, Berlin, among others. She is a recipient of the 2012-2013 Rhizome Commission and a member of two artist collectives, MSHR and Oregon Painting Society.

Courtesy of American Medium