Lot 401 | "Universal (Los Angeles)"

MORRIS, SARAH
1967 London

Title: "Universal (Los Angeles)".
Date: 2004.
Technique: Lacquer paint on canvas.
Measurement: 289 x 289cm.
Notation: Signed and dated verso on the canvas overlap: S Morris 2004. Here additionally titled.


Provenance:
- White Cube, London (label)

Exhibitions:
- Deichtorhallen, Hamburg 2011
- me Collectors Room Berlin 2016

Literature:
- Luckow, Dirk (ed.): Zwei Sammler - Thomas Olbricht und Harald Falckenberg, Cologne 2011, p. 52, ill. p. 24

Since the 1990s, the American artist Sarah Morris has been making a name for herself with her large-format grid-like paintings and as a filmmaker. In her works, she addresses the expressiveness of large cities and places it in moving and painted images. The artist is also enthusiastic about the techniques of printmaking. They are the inspiration for the oversized canvases, which embrace viewers with their size, allowing them to immerse themselves completely in the pictorial world.

Morris' paintings are usually created layer by layer in a lengthy, meticulous process in which the urban architecture is abstracted into patterns and structures. The "lights of the big city" with their reflexes, reflections, and everything that captivates people also flow into the depiction. This is also the case with the work "Universal (Los Angeles)" offered here. The composition is dominated by bright dark blue, light blue, orange and light green areas, which are set in a complex mesh by black, white and grey sections. This is reminiscent as much of the surfaces of modern architecture as of paths on a city map. The work was created in 2004 - the same year as one of Morris's most important films, "Los Angeles", in which the awarding of the Oscars is a central theme alongside journeys through the city. It is a common working method of the artist to create paintings that refer to the film subject in parallel to the films. As the title of our work suggests, it also refers to the City of Angels on the west coast of North America and to Universal Studios. These are based in Los Angeles and, like many other film studios in Hollywood, broadcast the representation of desires and dreams by celluloid all over the world. The painting's cool and detached presentation is reminiscent of the beauty of surfaces of all kinds that plays such a major role in Hollywood. No other place in the world stands more symbolically for perfection and its representation in the painting. This pictoriality is also expressed in the shiny facades of big city architecture. However, Sarah Morris not only depicts the "surfaces" of the city, but also symbolically the hidden expectations and longings that are reflected in the metropolis. The aesthetics and psychology of American cities are thus impressively staged in the artist's works.