SARAH MORRIS – GALERIA DO ROCK
2015-02-23Morris’ work examines the culture and ideology of late capitalism as it effects architecture, urban planning and social bureaucracy, engaging with what writer Bettina Funcke has identified as ‘the hyper-intensity of our time’.* She describes Morris’ paintings and filmmaking, parallel activities within her practice, as a way of investigating, tracing and playing with ‘urban, social and bureaucratic typologies’.
In Morris’ new series of paintings she focuses on the city of São Paulo, drawing her inspiration from a wide range of sources such as the city’s urban typology, its modernist buildings, iconic landmarks and unique geographical landscape.
In these abstract paintings, which are all household gloss on canvas, Morris employs doubling, symmetry and compression to build tension within her compositions, using an evocative palette of violet, orange, canary yellow, azure blue and black in forms that repeat, splinter and fall apart. Like her films, the paintings emerge from an amalgamation of diverse influences and have a sense of energy and restless movement, remaining unfixed entities that rely on notions of language, fluidity and play. Circular shapes seem to proliferate, as if open-ended reflections on urban density either contained within horizontal bands of colour or fragmented and bisected, recalling the patterning of lunar charts. In some works, such as Fura-Fila [São Paulo] (2014), Morris refers to specific aspects of the city – in this case, the experimental and controversial monorail, that for many years remained an unfinished, skeletal presence within the city.
Opposite – Total Solar Eclipse [São Paulo], 2014
Exhibition runs through to March 28th, 2015
White Cube São Paulo
Rua Agostinho Rodrigues Filho 550
Vila Mariana
São Paulo
