In March, White Cube marks 30 years of collaboration with Sarah Morris with an exhibition at the Mason’s Yard gallery in London.
The exhibition features a series of new paintings that examine global corporations alongside two films set in New York: her latest, Chris Rock (2025), focusing on the American comedian, and her first film Midtown (1998).
Born in 1967 in Kent, UK, and now based in New York, the British-American artist Morris is renowned for her large-scale abstract paintings and films which explore the relationship between architecture, urban systems, propaganda and the power structures that are shaping our contemporary reality.
Titled Snow Leopards and Skyscrapers, the exhibition takes inspiration from the 1978 book by the American writer Peter Matthiessen, ‘The Snow Leopard’. Documenting his two-month search for the infamous creature, Matthiessen references an invisible quest through travel to find an elusive force.
An exploration of globalisation inspired by artists such as Andy Warhol – who blurred the boundary between the commodity form and art during a time of political, technological and social shifts – as well as the minimalism of Donald Judd, the exhibition premieres a new body of vibrant paintings executed in Morris’s ready-made household gloss paint. Comprising diagrammatic architectural motifs, the works evoke the structures and language of international corporations including Johnson & Johnson, Lilly, Cambridge Analytica, JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock.
Also included in the exhibition is the presentation of Morris’s first film shown together with the UK debut of her latest film, marking nearly three decades of her filmmaking practice. Midtown (1998) captures the various coordinates and index used for her paintings, balancing the anonymity of crowded pavements with the imposing power of the surrounding architecture, including the Seagram Building, the headquarters of JPMorgan Chase, Revlon Corporation and Viacom, and the Grace Building. Shot in a single day in Manhattan, Midtown is the first of 17 films to date by the artist exploring cities and their inhabitants.
Meanwhile, Morris’s latest film, a portrait of her friend Chris Rock made in 2025, follows the American comedian in Baltimore and New York during the making of his Netflix special. The work situates the background of the city in relation to the role of the comedic and critical voice, through the history of American stand-up comedy.
Coinciding with the exhibition, and in celebration of the anniversary of her first presentation with White Cube in March 1996, Morris has created a limited-edition silkscreen, LIAR (2026). The original painting was featured in her show, ‘One False Move’, at the gallery’s first space, Duke Street. Featuring graphic bold lettering in pink and orange, the work will be exclusively available via White Cube Prints and Multiples.
Sarah Morris, Snow Leopards and Skyscrapers, 11th March – 9th May 2026 White Cube Mason’s Yard
The exhibition follows the artist’s first major retrospective in Japan, ‘Transactional Authority’ at the Nakanoshima Museum of Art in Osaka (31st January – 5th April 2026).
