American artist Sarah Morris works in the parallel mediums of painting and film. Her abstract paintings are images of urban, social, and bureaucratic forms. Using points, vectors, and coordinates that become her compositions, Morris’s paintings depict a global index of structures that are ever changing and connected. The films run parallel and simultaneous to the painting; the artist has described them as “two sides of the same coin.” Her non-narrative films are original visions, and even fantasies, of place. Inhabitants, industrial processes, architectures, politics and histories offer a dense series of images from A to Z to map systems of power, ideology, and psychological forces that are at play. Morris’s works encompasses a vision of globalism where, “no-one is outside,” meaning we are all complicit and inside the grid.

Hans Ulrich Obrist is a curator, art historian, critic, with a global outlook. In the past few decades he has collaborated and interacted with numerous artists and figures from various disciplines and fields, including Sarah Morris; their friendship has spanned the last two decades. A collection of their conversations, in which they discuss architecture, philosophy, film, and Morris’s artistic practice, has been published in An Open System Meets an Open System. At the end of May, Morris and Obrist will hold a conversation at UCCA, the location of Morris’s first major solo exhibition in China, and the next “stop” for their ongoing dialogue and correspondence.

For more information or to register for tickets to this bilingual event, visit: http://ucca.org.cn/en/program/morris-obrist-sarah-morris-conversation-hans-ulrich-obrist/