Sarah Morris, Los Angeles James Stanfield

Last night a friend and I went to the opening of Sarah Morris’ Los Angeles at the Friedrich Petzel Gallery. I was just blown away. Morris went to Los Angeles the week before the Oscar Awards ceremony was filmed and captured as many different sparkling aspects of the city as she could on video. Every image edited into the artwork is gorgeous. There are many long pan shots, images taken while the camera was tightly crammed into car interiors, as well as shots that look like they were made using a dolly and tracks. Her images capture the celebrity life of LA – from corporate meetings, trips to pristine drugstores, the rehearsal for the Oscars, scenes depicting teeth bleaching, sports cars racing down empty highways at night, people I almost recognize smoking cigars while on cell phones, all the way up to the red-carpeted entry of the awards ceremony.

In my mind this work of Morris’ not only represents one of the most enjoyable art-video experiences I’ve come across in a long while, but it also becomes a fantastic dissection of the Hollywood image branding factory. Every few seconds in Los Angeles gives another way of peering into Hollywood image machinery while at the same time creating a space to critically look at images in general. The video contains so many gems: Will Smith throwing up his hands with an attitude that may no longer be his own, images of movie executives and their personal assistants become confused with images of celebrities and their personal assistants, as well as pan shots describing back-lot movie sets that reminded me of the moving images of real LA displayed 3 minutes previous.

In Morris’ work the documentary and fantasy aspects of image-town LA mix so well that no longer can we look to her video as either document or fiction. Instead, what she has created truly fits into a much sought after in-between space that few artworks achieve. Let me also add, that her electronic sound track was perfect, enjoyable on its own as well as flawlessly synched with her flashy film scale projection.