ART-PRESENTATION: Sarah Morris-Falls Never Breaks

Sarah Morris, Strange Magic (Still), 2014, © Sarah Morris, Kunsthalle Wien GmbH ArchiveSince the ‘90s, Sarah Morris works with painting and film, which she regards as separate media with complementary content. She describes her processes as “Two sides of the same coin”, creating the paintings and films (which reference one another visually and thematically) simultaneously. Her focus is on architecture and urban development conceived as representing social and political systems, as well as today’s semiotic system, marked as it is by the signatures of capitalism.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Kunsthalle Wien Archive

Sarah Morris’ presents her solo exhibition “Falls Never Breaks” at Kunsthalle Wien, showing 10 films that constitute city portraits. Her films frequently explore the ways in which cities reveal our fascination with power and its manifold modes of representation. She does not provide a clear narrative. Instead, she creates a montage of short scenes transformed into rhythmically structured sequences. Aesthetic images are underpinned by distinct sound collages that vary as they modulate in accordance with the identity of the respective city. The older film is “Midtown” (1998) shot in New York during a single day. The film brings together sequences showing the streets of midtown Manhattan, combining the anonymity of the crowded sidewalks with the power of the buildings that frame the everyday movements of the city. It explores the narrative possibilities inherent in the simplest actions, and the typical activity of the street. The fragmented narrative emphasizes the structure of modern life as well as creating a space in which the viewer takes an extremely active role. Morris’s more recent series of work about Rio de Janeiro depicts the multifarious and complex layers of this most contradictory of cities, from its highly orchestrated and eroticised surface image, to its vast urban sprawl. In her series of “Rio” paintings (2012-13), Morris both expands and reduces her abstract compositions, and in the “Rio” film (2012), images of the city’s beaches, fruit stands, hospitals, iconic modernist architecture, football stadiums, factories and favelas are combined with images from the office of Oscar Niemeyer, the mayor of Rio and the parades of the city’s famous Carnival. In 2014, Morris’s focus shifted to Paris in the film “Strange Magic”, in which the artist explores a wide spectrum of narratives that operate under the umbrella of the Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy conglomerate. As Morris has said of the work “It all comes down to production. The production of space, the production of brands, the production of art. The production of dreams and desire, paradoxically intangible at the end of the day”. Commissioned for the opening of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the film, like Morris’s paintings, looks to decode the built environment, exploring cultural, economic and social typologies. Deconstructing the machinery behind France’s most desired commodities, champagne, perfume and fashion, the artist probes concepts of national identity and the inherent fantasy in the pursuit of luxury. Film program: Mon 12/12/16: Midtown (1998) Capital (2000), Wed 14/12/16: “1972” (2008), “Beijing” (2008), Mon 19/12/166: “Rio” (2012), Wed 21/12/16: “Robert Towne” (2006), “Los Angeles” (2004) and Sun 8/1/17: “Chicago” (2011) “Points on a Line” (2010). (all projections start at 19:00).

Info: Curator: Nicolaus Schafhausen, Kunsthalle Wien GmbH, Museumsplatz 1, Vienna, Duration: 8/12/16-08/1/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-19:00, Thu 11:00-21:00, www.kunsthallewien.at

Left: Sarah Morris, Banco Alliança (Rio), 2013, © Sarah Morris, Kunsthalle Wien GmbH Archive. Right: Sarah Morris, Falls Never Breaks at Kunsthalle Wien 2016, Design: M/M (Paris), 2016, © Photo: Parallax, Kunsthalle Wien GmbH Archive
Left: Sarah Morris, Banco Alliança (Rio), 2013, © Sarah Morris, Kunsthalle Wien GmbH Archive. Right: Sarah Morris, Falls Never Breaks at Kunsthalle Wien 2016, Design: M/M (Paris), 2016, © Photo: Parallax, Kunsthalle Wien GmbH Archive

 

 

Sarah Morris, Strange Magic (Still), 2014, © Sarah Morris, Kunsthalle Wien GmbH Archive
Sarah Morris, Strange Magic (Still), 2014, © Sarah Morris, Kunsthalle Wien GmbH Archive

 

 

Sarah Morris, Strange Magic (Still), 2014, © Sarah Morris, Kunsthalle Wien GmbH Archive
Sarah Morris, Strange Magic (Still), 2014, © Sarah Morris, Kunsthalle Wien GmbH Archive

 

 

Sarah Morris, Strange Magic (Still), 2014, © Sarah Morris, Kunsthalle Wien GmbH Archive
Sarah Morris, Strange Magic (Still), 2014, © Sarah Morris, Kunsthalle Wien GmbH Archive