Sarah Morris: Points on a Line

Film explores architectural icons

“Points on a Line is filmed with such visual precision and edited with such rhythm that the merger between history and mythology becomes evident as a defining characteristic of architecture.”—Artforum

Columbus, OH—Sarah Morris’s Points on a Line, a 36-minute film exploring natural and constructed environments, will be on view in the Wexner Center galleries January 28–April 15, 2012. In this film with a pulsing electronic soundtrack, Morris touches on the built environment and the connections and power structures that shape it, looking specifically at two icons of modernist architecture: Philip Johnson and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Beyond the oft-discussed personalities and questions of influence between the two master architects, Morris explores absence and presence, natural and manmade spaces, and historical significance and continuing relevance in this work that is at once painterly and cinematic.

Commissioned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Points on a Line takes viewers on a journey from Johnson’s Glass House in Connecticut to Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House in Illinois—with pivotal stops along the way at New York’s Seagram Building, designed by Mies, and the Four Seasons restaurant on its ground floor, designed by Johnson. In examining the two architects side-by-side, Morris places them in conversation with one another, implicitly underlining their similarities as well as their essential differences. Her filmic choices also reveal an ongoing interest in the duality of space—its interior psychology as well as its exterior form—and the preservation necessary to these landmarks.

Chief Curator Christopher Bedford notes, “Morris’s Points on a Line is at once sensual and incisive, advancing a view of two emblems of modernist architecture that confirms their continued relevance, while throwing into relief a new set of questions. The opportunity to show this film in a building that represents a landmark critical response to the modernist legacy in architecture adds another provocative wrinkle the show.”

The Wexner Center will produce a gallery guide for this exhibition featuring an essay by writer and dOCUMENTA (13) agent Adam Kleinman.

About Sarah Morris

Sarah Morris (b. 1967) lives in New York and London. Since the 1990s, she has observed environments and architecture in contemporary contexts, capturing panoramic metropolises in such films as Midtown (1998), Miami (2002), and Beijing (2008), as well as in her abstract paintings such as the Los Angeles series (2005‒06) or the site-specific Robert Towne (2006‒2007), executed on the courtyard and lobby of the Lever Building in New York and named for the famed Hollywood director, screenwriter, and legendary “script doctor.” Morris has had solo shows at K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2010); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main (2009); Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2008); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2006); and Palais de Tokyo, Paris, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut, and Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2005). She has been in group exhibitions at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York (2011); the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation, Vienna (2010); Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, and Centre Pompidou, Paris (2009); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2007). Her work is in public collections including those of the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Musée d’Arte Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Centre Pompidou in Paris; Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin; and the Tate Modern in London.

Low-resolution press image selection

These images are provided exclusively to the press and may only be used for promotional purposes directly related to the corresponding Wexner Center for the Arts exhibition, or surrounding events. All reproductions must be accompanied by the proper credit line and copyright information provided below. Images must be reproduced as presented here and may not be distorted, mutilated, or cropped without permission. For hi-res images, a broader selection, or more information, please contact Karen Simonian at (614) 292-9923.

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Sarah Morris Points on a Line, 2010 Red, MPEG 2 35 minutes, 48 seconds Photo courtesy of Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York	Sarah Morris Points on a Line, 2010 Red, MPEG 2 35 minutes, 48 seconds Photo courtesy of Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York
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Sarah Morris Points on a Line, 2010 Red, MPEG 2 35 minutes, 48 seconds Photo courtesy of Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York	Sarah Morris Points on a Line, 2010 Red, MPEG 2 35 minutes, 48 seconds Photo courtesy of the artist and Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York

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Exhibition support

The Wexner Center receives generous support from the Greater Columbus Arts Council, The Columbus Foundation, Nationwide Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council, as well as from the Corporate Annual Fund of the Wexner Center Foundation and Wexner Center members.

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