522 west 21st Street, Reverse Curve
We saw Serra’s work at Dia: Beacon and also at Storm King and each time I get impressed by the scale, proportion and size of his work. We can define Serra’s sculpture as using gross materiality, bombastic scale and elegance. He took minimalism into the last consequences.
Serra is on display in four different places in New York. The Dia: Beacon and 3 Gagosian Galleries – Triptychs and Diptychs is at 980 Madison Avenue, Forged Rounds at 555 west 24st street and reverse curve at 522 west 21 t street
The Reverse Curve is two pieces mounted against each other and each of them weighs 30 tons. They are highly curved and free standing. The sculpture measures 99 feet long and 20 feet high in a elongated S shape of two-inch-thick weatherproof steel (sealed by its patina of softly textured rust)
Originally it was conceived in 2005 for a public project in Reggio Emilia, Italy and was produced in Germany traveled by ship to Newark and exhibited at 21st street. This piece got rusty during the outside travel. It spent the duration of the trip on deck but this just added another color aspect to it. This shifts your viewpoint of what is new or old.
Reverse Curve
At the Dia: Beacon
Serra kept to his evolution of gigantism primarily producing pieces using metal to display them in town and in sculpture parks. Doing that he could make the viewer relate it to the landscape and architecture nearby and compared with right angles, form architecture with his sinuous line work. At Dia: Beacon it’s this huge square building that was previously a factory with these ellipses one inside the other in a gigantic scale. It’s a familiar shape but when shown in such large scale the viewer can get a different experience such as not knowing when the surface is getting narrow or where the opening is, making us aware of where we are in a given space and how our sensations alter as we move.
Richard Serra, Torqued Ellipse
Gagosian Gallery- Forged Rounds
555 west 24 st Street
In this exhibition Serra has placed standing steel cylinders that differ in proportion of height, each of one weighs fifty tons. But somehow they look lighter than this. Serra says that his new cylindrical works are about weight. Lightness he leaves to other artists.
Gagosian Gallery
980 Madison Avenue Triptychs and Diptychs
“Diptych #6,” from 2019.
The third show is of “drawings” he used heavy paper with thick black shapes in paint stick, ink, and silica
