|
|
|
|
|
|
|
SARAH MORRIS |
Sarah Morris is known for sixteen-millimeter films and abstract paintings and prints, all of which visually explore the built environment and our relationship with it. Using urban architecture as a metaphor for and reflection of social, economic, and political forces, Morris’s dizzying geometrics and dazzling cinematography combine to celebrate and deconstruct the gestalt of the American city. From the disorienting intensity of the Las Vegas strip to permutations on the International style architecture in midtown Manhattan, Morris sees the city as a subject rife with beauty and meaning.
Morris’ paintings are related to or emerge from her films. She composes colorful, linear grids, often with steep perspectival elements, into an abstract matrix to evoke not only the energy and geometry of the urban landscape, but its psycho-social forces as well. Pools - Cocowalk (Miami), 2003, is part of a recent series centered on the high-rise architecture and swimming pools of Miami, Florida. Morris made a film of the city in 2002 (with a soundtrack by Liam Gillick, a contemporary artist also represented in the Gallery’s permanent collection) followed by a series of paintings she collectively titled Pools. By using swimming pools as her focus, the paintings in this series become emblematic of a particular lifestyle and ideology associated with the culture of south Florida. The pools intersect and reflect the urban infrastructure and the myriad social forces that make up the city of Miami. Morris transforms them through her unique use of color and intricate web-like grid patterns, resulting in what one critic has called “…a new ultra-vision of a place.”
- Jennifer Bayles, Educator for Special Projects