New York
“Richard Serra: Early Work” focused on the first five years of the artist’s sculptural output, from the moment when he began working with found industrial materials (1966) to the completion of his first corpus of works, the monumental propped steel plates (1969–71) that later brought him international renown. Serra selected all of the featured works, established the size (and shape) of the two adjoining galleries in which they were displayed, and curated the installation. I note this, because the first gallery (focusing, with one exception, on works made before 1969) seemed cluttered. I would have liked more breathing room between the objects, but perhaps I am too accustomed to the wide white cube, which allows objects to stand or hang with ample space around them. The close proximity served a purpose, however: the installation recalled a 1968 photograph of Serra in his studio, thereby giving a sense of how one sculptural strategy led to another, as if we were in a laboratory where a variety of experiments were conducted side by side by the artist as scientist/engineer in search of an answer. …see the entire review in the print version of April’s Sculpture magazine.
