Sarah Morrisis an American artist born in 1967, living and working in New York and London.
Darren Almond is a British artist, born in 1971, living and working in London.
"One could make the claim that Sarah Morris' work defines a ‘semiotics of surface'. Through high-rise facades wihc as architectonic skins function as symbols of power and prosperity, visible from far away, simultaneously shaping the physiognomy of their urban context and being both a ‘decorative' and anonymous pars pro toto. Through the shiny surfaces of the glossy enamel housepaint used in the Midtown series which, in their regularity, suggest no depth whatsoever and thus, as a medium, is analogous to the mirror-like surfaces of the buildings themselves. Through the use of the spectacular, which reduces moments and sensations of metropolitan life to the universally valid symbolism of the subject."
—Jan Winkelmann, from "A Semiotics of Surface", in the exhibition catalogue Modern Worlds, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1999
"If Darren Almond can be credited with having an underlying sensibility, it is one based on maintaining discreet relationships amongst his various bodies of work. He often uses his ceiling fan as a metaphor for his various ways of working, with the three blades representing video, sculpture, and pieces done in real time. Almond clearly invites the works in the exhibition to be read in a singular fashion, each addressing such broadly different concerns as time, space and the body. But when all rather than any one of these concerns is brought to bear upon each piece, what emerges is Almond's interest in the instrumentalized human subject, which is to say the human subject understood in relation to the machine."
—Hamza Walker, from "What kind of tool am I?", in the exhibition catalogue Darren Almond, Kunsthalle Zürich, 2001
