D’Amelio Terras, New York
September 10 – October 3, 1998
D’Amelio Terras Gallery is pleased to debut the work of John Morris from September 10 through October 3, 1998.
This vast body of drawings represents six years worth of labor-intensive work. Obsessive, intricate, and often sexually charged, the drawings can look as sensitive as skin but likewise reflect a sense of measurement and order. Morris cites Bach as an influence as well as Paul Klee’s writings about polyphony, and over the years the work has progressed from delicate and simple harmonies to more dense and concentrated compositions. Within each frame, there are simple systems evolving into and integrating with more complicated ones, but all occur simultaneously on the page. The works explore repetition, variation, and change, each piece echoing previous works and drawing on Morris’ intuitive memory of earlier pieces.
When they aren’t untitled, Morris names his drawings after computer companies such as Radiant Systems or Concentric Network, often citing their ticker tape numbers from the stock exchange. Occasionally he will dedicate them to capitalists or entrepreneurs he has read about. It is as if Morris is abstracting his own information system to a new frontier. In fact he considers his drawings to be individual components of a giant and ongoing musical composition, but instead of notes, or numbers and computer glyphs for that matter, we get the pleasure of seeing his intense scratches and marks collide elegantly with space.
