"There is no way to make a drawing – there is only drawing."
--Richard Serra
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present Solids, a recent sequence of twenty-five drawings by Richard Serra. Solids was first shown in "Work comes out of work," Serra's comprehensive drawing exhibition at the Kunsthaus Bregenz earlier this year.
As in his earlier series Line Drawings (2000-2002) and Tracks (2007-2008), the process that Serra uses to make Solids is one where the action of marking contrasts with somewhat blind accumu... Read more
“There is no way to make a drawing – there is only drawing.”
—Richard Serra
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present Solids, a recent sequence of twenty-five drawings by Richard Serra. Solids was first shown in “Work comes out of work,” Serra’s comprehensive drawing exhibition at the Kunsthaus Bregenz earlier this year.
As in his earlier series Line Drawings (2000-2002) and Tracks (2007-2008), the process that Serra uses to make Solids is one where the action of marking contrasts with somewhat blind accumulation. Melted paintstick is poured onto a hard surface on the floor or a table. Sometimes a sheet of window-screen is placed on top of the liquid paintstick. Then the paper is laid down, either on top of the screen or directly on top of the liquid paintstick. Pressure is exerted on the back of the paper with a hard marking tool and the front side of the paper picks up the mark. In this series no direct drawing is done on the front of the paper. Therefore it is not possible to see the drawing until the paper is pulled off the floor or the table and turned over or the screen is lifted. In the Solids series, as the layering of gesture increases, so does the accumulated mass and perceived weight. The effects of compression, torsion, the surface tension of the material and, finally, gravity, all work, as the paintstick coalesces to produce widely varying surface textures.
Serra makes drawings not as precursors to sculptural works, but as separate, immediate, and fundamental lines of investigation, translating intentions into marks. The drawings are explorations in their own right and they can be seen as both integral to the overall concerns of the sculptor’s practice as well as unique intuitive explorations within their own set criteria.
