Weight is a value for me—not that it is any more compelling than lightness, but I simply know more about weight than about lightness and therefore I have more to say about it, more to say about the balancing of weight, the diminishing of weight, the addition and subtraction of weight, the concentration of weight, the rigging of weight, the propping of weight, the placement of weight, the locking of weight, the psychological effects of weight, the disorientation of weight, the disequilibrium of weight, the rotation of weight, the movement of weight, the directionality of weight, the shape of weight.
—Richard Serra
Artwork © 2019 Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Silke von Berswordt
Gagosian is to present recent sculptures and drawings by Richard Serra across three venues.
At 980 Madison Avenue, a series of new diptych and triptych drawings will be on view.
Four new works from Serra’s Rounds series will fill the entire West 24th Street gallery. Each forged-steel sculpture is composed of multiple 50-ton elements of differing diameters and heights.
Bisecting the West 21st Street gallery space will be Reverse Curve (2005), a sculpture measuring 99 feet long and 13 feet high. Originally conceived in 2005 for a public project in Reggio Emilia, Italy, Reverse Curve is finally being realized for the first time.
Triptychs and Diptychs Opening reception: Monday, September 16, 6–8pm
September 16–November 2, 2019 980 Madison Avenue, New York
Forged Rounds Opening reception: Tuesday, September 17, 6–8pm
September 17–December 7, 2019 555 West 24th Street, New York
Reverse Curve Opening reception: Tuesday, September 17, 6–8pm September 17, 2019–February 1, 2020
522 West 21st Street, New York
In conjunction with these exhibitions, Gagosian and Anthology Film Archives will present a three-day retrospective of Serra’s films and videos from October 17 through 19, drawn from the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Anthology Film Archives, Joan Jonas, and Stiftung Situation Kunst. This is the first time that all of the artist’s film and video work will be shown together. The screening on October 19 will be followed by a panel discussion between curators Søren Grammel, Chrissie Iles, and Jeffrey Weiss, moderated by art historian Benjamin Buchloh. Additional screenings of the full program will take place on October 20 and 23. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Julian Rose.
Get more New York exhibition news HERE
About The Artist
Richard Serra was born in 1938 in San Francisco, and lives and works in New York. Collections include the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Dia Art Foundation, New York; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain; Kröller-Mu?ller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Serra participated in Documenta 5, 6, 7, and 8; and La Biennale di Venezia in 1980, 1984, 2001, and 2013. In 2008 he presented Promenade for the Monumenta commission at the Grand Palais in Paris; and in 2005, The Matter of Time (1994–2005), a series of eight sculptures, was installed permanently at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. In 2014, East-West/West-East (2014) was permanently installed in the desert of the Brouq Nature Reserve in western Qatar. Serra has received numerous accolades, including a Fulbright Grant (1965); National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1974); Carnegie Prize (1985); Praemium Imperiale, Japan Arts Association (1994); and the Leone d’Oro, La Biennale di Venezia (2001), among others. In 2008 Serra was made Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Republic of France, and in 2015 he was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur for his “exceptional contribution to art, past, present, and future.” In September 2018, Serra accepted the J. Paul Getty Medal.
Since 1983, Gagosian has presented thirty-four major exhibitions of Serra’s work in the United States and Europe, including Intersection II (New York, 1993); Switch, which inaugurated West 24th Street, New York, in 1999; Wake, Blindspot, Catwalk, Vice-Versa (New York, 2003); Junction/Cycle (New York, 2011); Drawings (Paris, 2011–12); Double Rifts (Beverly Hills, 2013); New Sculpture (New York, 2013–14); the concurrent exhibitions Backdoor Pipeline, Ramble, Dead Load, London Cross and Drawing (London, 2014–15); Ramble Drawings (New York and Paris, 2015–16); Above Below Betwixt Between, Every Which Way, Silence (For John Cage), Through, and NJ-1 (New York, 2016); Drawings and NJ-2, Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure, Rotate (London, 2016); and Rifts (London, 2018).
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