Sarah Morris has won worldwide acclaim for her panoramic portraits of American metropolises, which were given new form through both her films and paintings since the mid 90's. Focusing on the charged psychology of urban spaces and the visually encrypted history and hierarchy in particularly architecture, her works can be viewed by the Turkish audience for the first time in Dirimart.

Sarah Morris' First Show In Turkey,
Two Erasing Principles and Chicago
14 September–22 October 2011

Two Erasing Principles
Dirimart
Abdi İpekçi Caddesi No:7/4
Nişantaşi
34367 İstanbul, Turkey

Hours:
Monday–Saturday, 10.00–19.00

T +90 212 291 3434
F +90 212 2196400
info@dirimart.org

Chicago
Garibaldi Binasi
İstiklal Cad. Deva Çikmazi No:2
Beyoğlu
Istanbul, Turkey

Hours:
Tuesday–Sunday 10.00–19.00

www.dirimart.org
Dirimart Gallery

Sarah Morris has won worldwide acclaim for her panoramic portraits of American metropolises, which were given new form through both her films and paintings since the mid 90's. Focusing on the charged psychology of urban spaces and the visually encrypted history and hierarchy in particularly architecture, her works can be viewed by the Turkish audience for the first time in Dirimart.

Active in the international art world since 2002, the art space Dirimart will be hosting the world-renowned American artist Sarah Morris' first solo exhibition in Turkey from September 14 to October 22, 2011. Besides a selection of paintings from Morris's latest series Clips and Knots, John Hancock, and Rings, the 2011 film Chicago (68') will also be shown at the Dirimart's new project space Garibaldi Building.

Sarah Morris's well-deserved ubiqituous fame is based on the geometric abstractions of both her paintings and films, playing with architecture, design and the psychology of urban environments. Parallel to her paintings, Morris's films also trace urban, social and bureaucratic topologies. In both media, she explores the psychology of the contemporary city and its architecturally encoded politics. Morris assesses what today's urban structures, bureaucracies, cities and nations might conceal and surveys how a particular moment can be inscribed and embedded into its visual surfaces.

Featuring pieces from some of the most defining series of the artist's career, in the works from her series Rings, Morris derives inspiration from the Olympic rings as well as alluding to interlocking highways. In a work from John Hancock, again one of her latest series, the artist uses forms reminiscent of the the first multi-functional high-rise building of America (called the John Hancock Center), creating forms that are continuously splintering and self-generating, and without resolution, creating after-images of capitalism and pre-images of new systems of control. Similarly, in Clips and Knots, the artist uses forms in which knots and paperclips interlock. She turns to simple office items and their capacity to symbolise such demanding mental operations as establishing connections, liaising and unifying. Form and content consequently becomes indistinguishable and the narrative of the paintings is intensified by the color scheme.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Morris's most recent film Chicago will also meet with the Turkish audience. Here Morris turns her camera towards an American city in the midst of transformation. She investigates this transformation, made all the more resonant in the wake of President Obama's administration, on the basis of psychology, aesthetics and architecture. Chicago captures the varied layers of a complex metropolis without verbal commentary or narration and collides the city's everyday moments with issues of social power and representation. An original music score by the artist Liam Gillick accompanies the impressions of Morris's lens. This distinctive 2011 work will be available to viewers between September 14–October 22, Tuesday–Sunday at the Dirimart’s new project space Garibaldi Building simultaneously with the exhibition.