Erin Morris Warmer, Warmer

Morán Morán is pleased to present Warmer, Warmer, the gallery’s first exhibition with Brooklyn-based artist Erin Morris.

When you play the “hot and cold game” being told “warmer” is an indication that you’re getting physically closer to something you’re looking for, cold means nowhere close, hot means you’ve arrived. Here, the heat comes from presence and the cold from absence. The association between distance and temperature might stem from our planetary perspective; summer comes when the sun is closest to our hemisphere and winter when it’s farthest. We’re situated in a “Goldilocks zone” of the universe, where our proximity to heat makes our world uniquely suited for life in a galaxy full of freezing and uninhabited planets. I imagine the association of warmth with closeness also comes from our bodies. Near to or even touching another person you can feel the heat radiating off their 98 degree form. When we die we go cold. 

These associations can be misleading though — the company of others is sometimes cold and solitude can be temperate. Though “warmth” can refer to affability, it’s not as simple as “warm/good” “cold/bad” and getting warmer is not always comforting or comfortable. Warmth can indicate approaching danger— draw too close to a flame and you’re liable to get burned. The synesthesia of temperature to emotional atmosphere extends to the visual too— some colors we call warm are often the same colors that signal approach with caution, be it poisonous snakes, traffic signs, or safety flags on a rough beach. As I type now, here on this warming planet, my hometown is being ravaged by unprecedented floods and I watch on the weather channel as local maps are painted with the deep oranges and reds of dangerous conditions. As a kid I imagined global warming as the sun drawing slowly but uncontrollably close to earth.  

This work is a presentation of proximity, and consequently is as much a thermometer as a visual record of encounters. Do you feel the greenhouse effect of my attention? Can we please, please turn on the A/C?

– Erin Morris, 2025

Erin Morris (b. 1994) is an artist and children’s art educator born in Latrobe, PA and raised predominantly in central North Carolina. She is currently based in Brooklyn NY. Morris received her MFA from The University of Pennsylvania in 2024 and her BFA from The Cooper Union in 2017. Morris has recently exhibited at Europa, with a solo presentation titled 5-7 Business Days; and at Greene Naftali, in the group exhibition titled On Landscape.