Richard Serra - Gagosian

Richard Serra, Rotate, 2016

Richard Serra: NJ-2, Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure, Rotate is at Gagosian, London until 25 February 2017.
Three large-scale steel sculptures by Richard Serra are on show at Gagosian's Britannia Street gallery and some of his Composite Drawings are on display at their Davies Street gallery until 17 December.

I don’t think I have ever been disappointed by a Richard Serra exhibition: in the last 2 years I have seen his previous show at Gagosian London (2014, see below) and last year I saw his work at Dia: Beaon which includes his monumental Torqued Ellipses (see below). The simple but massive, physical and elemental forms are strangely exhilarating – in particular those works into which the viewer can enter – for example, NJ-2 in the current show. 
The work is concerned with weight, gravity and form. As Serra says, in conversation with Michael Craig-Martin:

I’m involved with evolution of form, the connection where space and matter meet. One of the things that form constantly has to do is reach a point where it pushes back against content…. matter informs form. That is the basis of my work: it always has been … I think the way that we understand the world is through weight and gravity. All our gestures, all our movements, the rhythm of our body, every time we turn, every time we take a step, every time we move, the gravitational load impinges on us. (Read the full text here.)

It’s exciting stuff.

Richard Serra, NJ-2, 2016

Richard Serra, NJ-2, 2016 (detail)

Richard Serra, Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure, 2016

Richard Serra, Composite 1-9, 2016

Richard Serra - Gagosian

Richard Serra, Dead Load, 2014, forged steel

Richard Serra is at Gagosian, London until 28 February 2015.
Four tremendous steel sculptures by Richard Serra are on show at Gagosian's Britannia Street gallery and a five metre 'drawing' is on display at their Davies Street gallery until 22 November. I haven't seen the latter but can vouch for the power of the sculptures. As the artist explained in an exchange with Adrian Searle the selected works offer "different ways to approach a field or a space or a context". Dead Load presents the literal embodiment of massive, dead weight; Backdoor Pipeline is a huge, curved, elliptical tunnel through which the viewer can walk to experience the interplay of convex and concave and the changing play of light and dark; Ramble is a room full of 24 upright slabs of steel of varying dimensions between which one has to navigate a route; finally, London Cross is perhaps the 'classic' Serra in which one threateningly enormous wall of steel is balanced, above head height, diagonally across another. Thrilling stuff.
Read Adrian Searle's review. Watch a video tour of the installation. (All photographs by Mike Bruce / Gagosian.)

Richard Serra, Backdoor Pipeline, 2010

Richard Serra, Ramble, 2014

Richard Serra, London Cross, 2014

Richard Serra, Double Rift #2, 2011 (Painstick on handmade paper - at Davies Street gallery)