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Richard Serra

Drawings

April 1–May 14, 2011
Geneva

Installation view Artwork © Richard Serra

Installation view

Artwork © Richard Serra

Installation view Artwork © Richard Serra

Installation view

Artwork © Richard Serra

Installation view Artwork © Richard Serra

Installation view

Artwork © Richard Serra

Installation view Artwork © Richard Serra

Installation view

Artwork © Richard Serra

Installation view Artwork © Richard Serra

Installation view

Artwork © Richard Serra

About

Drawing gives me an immediate return for my effort and the result is commensurate with my involvement. It is an activity that requires solitude; it is the most concentrated space in which I work.
—Richard Serra

Gagosian is pleased to present an exhibition of recent drawings by Richard Serra, executed between 2007 and 2010.

Throughout his career, Serra has made drawings as separate, immediate, and fundamental lines of investigation to his sculptures. They are explorations in their own right, integral to the overall concerns of his sculptural practice, and unique intuitive explorations within their own established criteria. Using black paintstick or oilstick, heated to a viscous and sometimes fluid state, he creates elemental forms through direction action on the paper and the accretion of medium. These drawings are self-referential: they do not imply surface and weight but rather they are surface and weight.

Dreiser (2009) and Artaud (2010) are from the Greenpoint Rounds series. In these works, which each measure almost two meters square, a large black circle is embedded in the surface of the heavy paper. Serra uses paintstick, heating it to a viscous and sometimes fluid state. He slowly builds up the dense and irregular form so that the unique surface of each drawing appears as a palpable structure. Each drawing exerts a vastly different energy and exudes a singular character. Other works in the exhibition, such as Stratum 12 and Tracks #47, feature black arcs to the right or left of the paper. As the dense pigment in these works absorbs and dissipates light, the sheer mass and volume of the drawing emerge from the surface as a declarative presence of thick contracting and retaining accumulations.

Anna Weyant’s Two Eileens (2022) on the cover of Gagosian Quarterly, Winter 2022

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2022

The Winter 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Anna Weyant’s Two Eileens (2022) on its cover.

Richard Serra: Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by Alina Ibragimova

Richard Serra: Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by Alina Ibragimova

Violinist Alina Ibragimova performs Bach’s Sonata for Solo Violin No. 1 in G Major: Adagio (BWV 1001, c. 1720) from within Richard Serra’s sculpture Transmitter (2020) at Gagosian, Le Bourget. Organized by Bold Tendencies, a nonprofit organization that commissions artists to produce site-specific projects and present performances, in collaboration with Gagosian, this recorded performance took place on May 8, 2022 before a live concert of Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time, 1941).

Richard Serra: Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by Mario Brunello

Richard Serra: Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by Mario Brunello

Cellist Mario Brunello performs Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major: Prelude (BWV 1007, c. 1717–23) within Richard Serra’s sculpture Transmitter (2020) at Gagosian, Le Bourget. Organized by Bold Tendencies—a nonprofit that commissions artists to produce site-specific projects and present performances—in collaboration with Gagosian, this recorded performance took place on May 8, 2022, before a live concert of Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time, 1941).

Black square

From Richard Serra: Trevor Noah’s Message Against Racial Injustice

In response to enduring racial injustices and the recent widespread civil unrest, Richard Serra urges people to watch this video commentary by Trevor Noah, host of The Daily Show.

Richard Serra, Hands Scraping, 1968, film still.

The Art of Perception: Richard Serra’s Films

For eleven years, from 1968 to 1979, Richard Serra created a collection of films and videos that felt out the uncharted phenomenological boundaries of the medium. Carlos Valladares explores a selection of these works.

The cover of the Fall 2019 Gagosian Quarterly magazine. Artwork by Nathaniel Mary Quinn

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2019

The Fall 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a detail from Sinking (2019) by Nathaniel Mary Quinn on its cover.