n/eighty nine
Prabhavathi Meppayil’s work engages global legacies of modernism and Minimalism through artisan techniques. Meppayil’s approach to her work is forged through the familial: particularly, the fact that she descends from a long line of goldsmiths in Bangalore. Meppayil takes the universal language of minimal abstraction and grounds it in a geographically specific and centuries-old tradition. Her work fits within a larger constellation of minimal abstraction by Indian artists, such as Nasreen Mohamedi and Zarina. She is also in dialogue with Western postwar artists such as Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, and Robert Ryman. Meppayil expands upon these precedents and their attendant ideas around abstraction, craft, materiality, and process, reconstructing them through an acute awareness of their histories as well as the potent sense of tradition petrified in her goldsmithing tools.
Artwork Details
- Title: n/eighty nine
- Artist: Prabhavathi Meppayil (Indian, born Bangalore, 1965)
- Date: 2016
- Medium: Copper wire embedded in gesso panel
- Dimensions: 48 × 60 in. (121.9 × 152.4 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Purchase, Christian Keesee Charitable Trust Gift, 2017
- Object Number: 2017.74
- Rights and Reproduction: © Prabhavathi Meppayil, Courtesy Pace Gallery
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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