I have a very special superpower when I travel that causes me, unerringly, to choose exactly the wrong direction in which to walk when I exit public transportation, the one that sends me directly away from wherever I'm trying to go. This served me well when I was last in London, however, for in my quest to find a gallery near Liverpool Street I got completely disoriented coming out of the station and ran smack into Richard Serra's Fulcrum, a giant freestanding sculpture with his characteristic rusting metal slabs leaning together in a sort of teepee. It took my breath away as his pieces always do, with his use of industrial materials marked by the effects of passing time. On the occasion of an upcoming solo exhibition this fall for Serra at London's Gagosian the Guardian has put together a gallery that includes Fulcrum as well as some of his other installations from around the world, and you can get a sense even in the pictures of the massive scale of his work. The Gagosian is already planning ahead for their show:
The artist's sculptures are so big and heavy that they always present
logistical headaches. Special road permits will be needed to just get
them into the King's Cross gallery.
Earlier this year Serra installed a piece called Promenade at the Grand Palais in Paris as part of their Monumenta commission series. It essentially consisted of five monolithic steel plates carefully placed within that vaulted space, and Adrian Searle found it staggering:
As I get older, I like Serra's art more. I used to resist it
intellectually, while my body told me something else. Now my body tells
me something else again, and I'm more exhilarated by what he does - not
every time, but more and more. You have to take Serra's art as it
comes, work by work, occasion by occasion. As we spoke, he said things
like: "Do we have a sculpture here?", "Is this viable?", and "I was
having a real good time. I was hanging weights in the air, lifting 73
tons on its edge." He spoke of having been fearful. Promenade could
have been only big, only inert. The building and the light could have
killed it. Instead it is a dance.
Searle's podcast that he recorded while walking through the piece is well worth a listen, as you can physically hear the emotional effect Promenade is having on him. I only wish I could have seen it myself.