OSAKA.- Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka is presenting Transactional Authority, the first retrospective exhibition in Japan of the American artist Sarah Morris (born 1967). Since the mid 1990s Morris has produced a large body of work which reflects her interest in networks, typologies, globalization, architecture, institutions and the metropolis. Through her use of both reality and vivid abstraction, Morris creates a new language of place and politics. Morris is considered one of the most intriguing artists of her generation.
The exhibition features close to 100 artworks created over the course of more than three decades incorporating paintings, all of Morris’s 17 films, drawings, and a newly commissioned large-scale wall painting measuring 6 x 18.85 m.
Exhibition overview
An introduction to Sarah Morris’s entire oeuvre, including 41 paintings and 17 films
The exhibition features 41 of Morris’s iconic paintings, from her earliest to most recent works. Moreover, her films, which she created in parallel with her paintings, will all be shown, including her most recent film, Chris Rock. The exhibition reflects on the flux of major cities around the world, depicting their intricately intertwined cultural, political, and economic structures with beauty, tension and ambivalence through both painting and film.
World premiere, new film work: Chris Rock
The exhibition is the world premiere of Morris's newest film Chris Rock. Shot in both Baltimore and New York City during the lead-up to his live comedy special for Netflix, the film offers a glimpse into Rock's world and the history of the development of his public voice.
Chris Rock maintains Morris's unique approach to filmmaking which blurs the boundaries between observation performance, and spectacle illuminating the factors which shape the role of the potential for the critical voice in the city.
Publication
A monograph has been published by Heibonsha in Japanese and English. This is the first comprehensive publication on Morris’s work published in Japan—with newly commissioned essays by the curator of the exhibition, Nakamura Fumiko, Dr. Ikegami Hiroko, and John Kelsey.
Sarah Morris
Born in the UK in 1967, Sarah Morris is based in New York. The internationally acclaimed artist is known for her geometric abstract paintings using diagrammatic grids. Since the 1990s, Morris has produced a large body of work using paintings, films, site-specific wall paintings drawings, and sculptures which reflect her interest in networks, typologies, architecture and the city. She sees her paintings as self-generating, open to interpretation, motion and change, giving the viewer a heightened sense that they are part of a larger system. Creating a virtual architecture of forms, the work incorporates a wide array of subjects from multinational corporations to transportation networks and maps, GPS technology and even lunar cycles. In her films, a parallel practice, Morris explores the psycho-geography and the dynamic nature of cities in flux through the multi-layered and fragmented narratives they contain. The situations the artist places herself and the viewers within reflect the hierarchies and contradictions we inhabit.
Morris’s work has been shown internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions and is in many public collections around the world, including Fondation Beyeler, Basel; Kunsthaus Zürich; LUMA Foundation, Arles; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Modern, London; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Jumex Museum, Ciudad de Mexico.
