West, London
Sabine Moritz
The Sleep of Tomorrow
Pilar CorriasThe Sleep of Tomorrow presents new paintings and works on paper by Sabine Moritz, tracing an experimental shift in her practice. The exhibition brings together two strands of her work–abstraction and figuration–that she had previously kept apart. Large-scale canvases dominate the presentation; some purely abstract, others in which figures surface within fields of colour and light. Moritz has pursued abstraction and figuration in parallel for years. Her abstract paintings unfold through layers of luminous, dynamic brushwork, where shifting fields of texture and colour generate a sense of movement and atmosphere. They are not simply non-representational but charged with memory, evoking landscapes, sensations, or fragments of experience without coming into focus. These works form the painterly ground into which her more recent figures begin to appear. Moritz has developed female figures placed in settings that hover between foreground and background. Up until this body of work, she had kept abstraction and figuration strictly separate. Recently Moritz has started experimenting with paintings in which figures and abstraction intersect. A shift into figuration is coming back into Moritz’s practice; female figures emerge out of these new paintings referencing classical painting and her own womanhood. She balances these two different ways of thinking; shifting and switching mindsets between the two contrasting states of being whilst painting. In these new works, the figures emerge tentatively from the surface–as if carved from the paint itself–sometimes sculptural, sometimes dissolving into surrounding colour. Seen together, the two currents inform and amplify one another. The abstract paintings underpin Moritz’s concern with rhythm, atmosphere and structure, while the figurative works open new questions. The dialogue between these two strands within her work suggests painting as a process of continual transformation, in which forms, whether abstract or figurative, evolve and recombine like the cells of a living organism. Alongside the canvases, works on paper reveal the immediacy of Moritz’s thinking in line and gesture. A separate room is dedicated to the works on paper. Each of the more than twenty works reveals its own complex world. Across all media, her practice resists fixed categories. Sabine Moritz (b. 1969, Quedlinburg) lives and works in Cologne. Moritz started her studies at Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach (from 1989 to 1991) and completed her studies at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (graduated 1994). Moritz has been widely exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in Düsseldorf, Brussels, Paris and London. Selected solo exhibitions of Moritz’s work include: Les cieux, Château d’Aubenas, Aubenas (2025); Ara, Olivia Foundation, Mexico City (2025); Heart of Drought | Under the Skin, Pilar Corrias, London (2023); Sabine Moritz - Neue Werke in der Sammlung, Kunstsammlung NRW - K21, Düsseldorf (2023); Lobeda oder die Rekonstruktion einer Welt, Lyonel- Feininger-Galerie, Quedlinburg (2022); Mercy, Pilar Corrias, London (2021); Journal Entries, Heni Leviathan, London (2020); Sterne und Granit, Kunsthalle, Rostock (2019); Neuland, Kunstverein Bremerhaven (2017); Harvest, Pilar Corrias, London (2015); Sabine Moritz, Von der Heydt-Kunsthalle, Wuppertal (2014); Concrete and Dust, Foundation de 11 Lijnen, Oudenburg (2013); Lobeda, Kunsthaus sans titre, Potsdam (2011). Selected group exhibitions include: Wohnkomplex, Das Minsk, Potsdam (2025); Age of Terror: Art Since 9/11, Imperial War Museum, London (2017); Faber-Castell International Drawing Award 2012, Neues Museum – Staatl. Museum für Kunst und Design, Nuremberg (2012); and The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, Cultuurcentrum Mechelen, Mechelen (2010). Her work is included in prominent collections including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Hirschhorn Museum, Washington D.C.; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf; Lenbachhaus, Munich; LACMA, Los Angeles; MoCA, Los Angeles; SFMoMA, San Francisco; Tate, London.