on the case: Castelli/ Sonnabend label, Tapes & films, New York

PROVENANCE
Private collection, Massa

SITOGRAPHY
https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/ressources/oeuvre/cynX5K8 (dated 1969)
https://whitney.org/collection/works/15564 (dated 1969)

The artist, known mainly as a sculptor, is among the protagonists of the American and European artistic panorama of the second half of the twentieth century.
His works are an intertwining of different contemporary disciplines and theoretical reflections on minimalism art, process art and the anti-form. Morris studies the relationship between space, object and observer by installing geometric solids to create cold and silent environments. Morris's attention is also focused on physical, chromatic, tactile, plastic and luminous specificities of the different materials he uses such as: wood, metal and glass. The intent is to always offer the viewer new perceptive possibilities.
Starting from the 1960s, Morris experimented with the film medium, so as to trace elements of continuity of a deeply analytical and articulated path. Light becomes the protagonist: objects capable of capturing it and emanating it are a preamble to the reflex action of the mirror that captures the passage of someone body in space and time. Morris arranges the mirrors in such a way as to create ‒ reflection effect
‒ fictitious spaces within an environment. The artist defined them as “fraudulent spaces”.

The work we are presenting at auction, entitled Mirror, is a 9-minute short film shot in black and white without sound, where the artist explores the deceptive and changing space of reality through the use of a mirror which, held in the hands, reflects the surrounding snow environment. Subsequently, moving backwards from the camera, Morris is incorporated into nature, vanishing into it.