FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Opening reception: Friday, November 16, 6-8 pm

Friedrich Petzel Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of "Crystal", a solo exhibition of new work by Sarah Morris. This exhibition presents a new series of paintings and a print edition that work parallel to her film "Capital". Sarah Morris made the film in Washington during the final days of the Clinton administration. It is a record of now unimaginable access to the centers of power.

"Capital", first screened at the National Gallery in Berlin (Hamburger Bahnhof) and recently shown at the Guggenheim, New York, draws a complex and layered city portrait. The World Bank, The Pentagon, The White House, The Brentwood Post Office Facility, The Watergate building, the daily activities of the President and an overall consideration of the city form a sequence of reflection points for the new paintings on show here. While her earlier paintings from New York and Las Vegas offered a new examination of the codes and structures of our urban environment, these new works introduce a revised mapping of power, desire, urbanism and design.

A city like Washington is more than a set of symbolic places. Its cityscape is a low-rise grid of exchange and control, power, need and inequality. Morris's new paintings expose the forms that underscore the daily functions of the city. Each work carries a title that relocates the viewer, while the paintings move beyond something derived from concrete structure alone. The complexity operates as an analytical tool in her reconstruction of a cityscape that can embody the dynamic, the designed, the possible and the imaginary.

The print edition "Capital Timecodes" details a precise account of the footage shot towards the production of the film. A log of daily work that forms a breakdown of time spent in consideration of a city. A record of access and a moment before decision making is layered onto the work. The language used in the prints exposes the rapidity of Morris's accumulation of information and attests to the research at the heart of her recent work.

This exhibition is the result of a moment of openness that has recently been dramatically problematized. A cool record of access and control that forms the matrix that continues to exist behind staged decision making. Sarah Morris traces the underlying aesthetic of the capital just before it was thrust into the spotlight, newly locked down and temporarily on the edge.

This is Sarah Morris's second one-person show at Friedrich Petzel Gallery. The opening reception is on Friday, November 16, and the exhibition will be on view through December 22, 2001. Beginning November 17, there will be a daily screening of "Capital" at 3:00 PM. For further information, please contact the gallery at info@petzel.com, or call (212) 680-9467.