Sri Prabha’s Trippy, Shamanistic Art Journey is On View Now

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The Boca Raton Museum of Art presents the new exhibition Sri Prabha: Resonator-Reanimator (on view June 14 – October 22). “Sri Prabha brings to light the tools of perception; and visitors who experience this tour de force at the Boca Raton Museum of Art will find an imaginative, multi-sensory panorama of art,” says Irvin Lippman, the Executive Director of the Museum. Prabha masterminds these site-specific installations by fusing ideas from Vedic eastern philosophies and his visions of western science, to explore our connection to the natural world. Melded together, they land the viewer within a psychedelic multiverse of saturated colors. “The idea is for people to go through a portal and realize we are more similar than different, that all of these elements floating around space came together and created us,” says Sri Prabha. “We are all interconnected, and we can change our behavior to work together and collaborate. As civilizations, we like to think that we are different from each other, but we are really not. Our technology is changing rapidly, but our behavior has not kept up.”

His work emphasizes the artist’s keen interest in contemporary environmental issues, and how humans interact with the natural world. The artist is currently based in Fort Lauderdale, he was born in Hyderabad, India in 1969, and has lived in the United States since 1978. The exhibition is curated by Kelli Bodle, the Associate Curator of the Museum. The Museum is located in Palm Beach County, Florida at the Mizner Park entertainment district. The new Brightline commuter train system features a new train station conveniently located within walking distance of the Museum, with connections to Miami, Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Orlando..

Prabha was recently selected as one of the winners of the 2022 Art Basel Miami Beach public art showcase by the City of Miami Beach, for a monumental installation Cosmic Occupancy (see the video of his spectacular light projection orb for Art Basel at vimeo.com/777854294).

At the Boca Raton Museum of Art, Prabha has created site-specific, multi-sensory installations that people can walk through – mixed media, video, soundscapes and audio frequencies, light projections, interactive structures, traditional Indian sari fabrics, abstract paintings, digital print collages, assemblages, and more. “Through these installations I want to encourage the viewers to meditate on what has come before us, all the way back to the primordial ooze, through today and what we are all passing through together ahead. I want people to get lost in the experience, and get trippy in a shamanistic way.”  Abstract, patterned digital projections of light sweep the walls, covering paintings and sculptures to create constantly shifting organic forms. Paired with audio of meditative, lulling sounds, the overall feel is that of preparing the mind for meditation. Within this mind frame of meditation, visitors will experience references by the artist to the smallest and greatest elements of our universe. Spiraling, pulsing amorphous shapes call to mind the view through a microscope, and twinkling flashes of light are reminiscent of a telescope’s sight. One of the exhibition’s interactive elements, titled Spaceresearchcentre, allows people to enter a teepee-like structure to meditate while surrounded by video projections and flashes of light that flicker softly on the fabric walls.

Watch the PBS Television profile about the artist at pbs.org/video/artist-profile-sri-prabha-art-loft-801-j0u7oh/.  Prabha’s works are in several private collections in Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Miami, New York, Washington, DC, and Copenhagen. His exhibitions include: the Florida Prize 2019 at Orlando Museum; Verge Art Fair New York; the King County Public Arts Program Seattle; Art Palm Beach; the South Florida Cultural Consortium at MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami; and the Toronto Art Fair, among others.

About the Museum

Founded by artists, the Boca Raton Museum of Art was established in 1950 as the Art Guild of Boca Raton. The organization has grown, now in its eighth decade, to encompass a Museum, Art School, and Sculpture Garden.  As one of South Florida’s leading cultural landmarks, the Museum provides educational programs and a robust exhibition schedule to the community, and to visitors from around the world.