Richard Serra at Gagosian - New York - art exhibition

Art in America, April, 2004 by Edward Leffingwell

In his third major exhibition at Gagosian, Richard Serra presented three new monumental works expanding the experience of viewers moving through, around and within the constituent elements, and one work consisting of a single thick sheet of steel resting on the gallery floor. In Wake (2002-03) he aligns five towering, closed volumes of weatherproof steel in such a way that the serpentine passageways between them seem to shimmer with light. The five forms curve with or away from each other--both vertically and along their lengths in a flattened-S toroid form--to create a series of spooning or ovoid spaces. Wake is 14 feet high and 46 feet wide by 75 feet long overall. In their related courses, the volumes, up to 6 feet wide, resemble the weathered hulls of slender freighters competing in some impossible regatta, with expressive splashes of rust from bow to stern. The three that appear to be the longest are placed forward of the convoy to convey the motion and tension implicit in Serra's "race."

The lyrical Vice-Versa (2003) consists of two curving walls that are simply articulated in opposite directions, creating a generous corridor of back-to-back crescents that curve gently from top to bottom and more deeply from end to end. More than 15 feet high, 38 feet long and 10 feet across, this work came closest to touching the building's ceiling. Bathed in a warm afternoon glow admitted to the space by skylights, the element closer to the center of the gallery was vivid with largely vertical bands of almost painterly corrosion. In this installation, it replicated the curve of the closest wall of Blindspot (2003), an eye-shaped spiral 13 feet high, 54 long and 32 across. Blindspot is scored and otherwise marked along its lengths with flakes of patina and bright, reflected scars of abraded steel. Given the potential for anxiety or mischief in the narrow passageway of the spiral, gallery attendants limited the number of viewers admitted at any one time.

Catwalk (2003) consists of a roughly 16-by-19 1/2-foot plate of 2-inch-thick steel that, in a corner washed with filtered daylight, spanned a cut in the gallery floor and rested on two opposed sides. Spatially sensitive visitors crossing the expanse had the sense that it responded to their weight as it floated like a bridge above the space. Informed by the experience of Catwalk, marveling at the appearance of a thin line of light along a curving base in Wake, one thoughtful viewer was moved to ask if anyone could tell her exactly where this steel touched ground.