Sarah Morris made the film “Capital” in Washington during the final days of the Clinton administration. It is a record of now unimaginable access to the centers of power. Capital continues Morris’ investigation of the way we decode and therefore begin to understand the built world around us. “Capital”, first exhibited at the National Gallery in Berlin (Hamburger Bahnhof) draws a complex and layered city portrait. The Mall, the White House Press Office, the World Bank, uniformed members of the Secret Service, the Presidential motorcade, the Watergate Complex, the Kennedy Center, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, The Pentagon, the daily activities of the President and an overall consideration of the city form a sequence of reflection points for her series of paintings. 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.
