62. RICHARD SERRA: A SPACE BETWEEN ABSORPTION AND DISSIPATION.
Six Large Drawings, David Zwirner - LONDON.
Richard Serra, Periodic Table, 1991, Paintstick on two (2) sheets of paper 83 x 149 inches 210.8cm x 378.5 cm RS-0324 SERR104559A - Photograph by Zhonghua for M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) April 2024.
‘Black is a property, not a quality. In terms of weight, black is heavier, creates a larger volume, holds itself in a more compressed field. It is comparable to forging. Since black is the densest color material, it absorbs and dissipates light to a maximum and thereby changes the artificial as well as the natural light in a given room. A black shape can hold its space and place in relation to a larger volume and alter the mass of that volume readily.’ R.S.
Richard Serra, Kerouac, 2009, Paintstick on handmade paper 78 1/2 x 78 3/4 inches 199.4 x 200 cm RS-2266 SERR10506. Photograph by Zhonghua for M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) April 2024.
Six remains - a burnt land in memory -
drenched dry as wax powdered cracked to demarcation -
to drain to disparate - as tar fractures to crisp.
To fill these planes of nothing
to flood these fields to edges tawn.
A blade tip - to split - as a board leaves a wall - a leaf peels a book - white sun reflected on a hanging sword -
- a shard under door - to watch a passing car - glide to silence
- to strip back to remember - a beginning - the papered beginnings
- to wrench out the entries - as endpapers remain and hardbacks nailed open.
A moon - viewed from afar - fallen still from the heat of attention.
- impressed, embedded with hushed suggestion - graveled to dust.
Blocks to black slammed to one - pressed between paintings as sculpture - faces hewn as raw.
As a space between scraping a sky - as a powercut blanks or quarried slabs wedge to blink between pagan beams - eclipse obelisks reach.
A scarred ridge - seamed without stitch - calm to observe - numb to jolt.
A verticle as velvet - sodden - brushed with a besom of wire - once controlled to caress - now disrupted from scrubbing. Not erasure - more exposure - and yet this mass of marks forms a mono - a once horizontal sheath - as a map, whose delineation long abraided - reveal to revert - return to the start.
Fiberious as filings held in state - A darkened grain advance of rust - to be studied - as a land mass bare.
Richard Serra, Triple Rift #2, 2018, Paintstick on four (4) sheets of handmade Japanese paper 9 feet 9 inches x 22 feet 3 x 6.7m RS-3952 SERR10507. Photograph by Zhonghua for M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) April 2024.
Richard Serra - Six Large Drawings - David Zwirner - Until 18 May 2024.
Special thanks: Sara Chan and Niamh Brogan at David Zwirner.
