Name: Richard Serra
Start: 2024-4-9
End: 2024-5-18
Location: David Zwirner

“Throughout his career Serra’s drawings have charted their own path. They have entwined with his sculptural work in different ways at different times, but they have never been preparatory for, or subordinate to, his sculpture. They have their own identity and concerns.… pushing the boundaries of technique, material, and scale in order to discover something new.”

—Barnaby Wright, curator of Richard Serra: Drawings for the Courtauld, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 2013–2014

Installation view, Richard Serra: Six Large Drawings, David Zwirner, London, 2024

Known for his large-scale, site-specific sculptures, Serra consistently produced drawings throughout his career. Beginning in 1971, the artist employed black paintstick (compressed oil paint, wax, and pigment) to create these works. Six Large Drawings is the last exhibition conceived by the artist during his lifetime. Reflecting a considered installation across both floors of the gallery, the presentation includes two of Serra’s large-scale diptychs from the early 1990s, two works from his series of Greenpoint Rounds, and two multipanel Rift drawings.

Richard Serra

Navajo, 1990

Paintstick on two (2) sheets of handmade Japanese paper

83 inches x 151 inches (210.8 cm x 380 cm)

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The two earliest works in the exhibition relate to a series of eight large-scale drawings originally exhibited in 1989 at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York.

Installation view, Richard Serra: 8 Drawings: Weights and Measures, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, 1989

Poster for Richard Serra’s 1989 solo exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York

"The series of diptychs also marks a moment when the artist returned to using a meat grinder, a device that he had first used to process material when he was a student at Yale but had not employed since. He turned to it again as a way to give the paintstick a grainy texture.… Running the blocks of … pigment through the grinder to create a more fluid drawing substance, he collects the material on the soft edge of an intact block of paintstick, which becomes a tool to apply it like spackle over the surface of the paper."

—Michelle White, co-curator of Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective, The Menil Collection, Houston, 2012

Richard Serra

Periodic Table, 1991

Paintstick on two (2) sheets of paper

83 × 149 inches (210.8 cm × 378.5 cm)

As the artist notes, “They are masses in relation to each other. They are not about composition or figure ground. They emphasize the comparison of different weights in juxtaposition.”

Installation view, Richard Serra: Weight and Measure, Tate Britain, London, 1992

Installation view, Richard Serra: Six Large Drawings, David Zwirner, London, 2024

“Black is a property, not a quality. In terms of weight, black is heavier, creates a denser 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.”

—Richard Serra in "Notes on Drawing,” Richard Serra: Drawings/Zeichnungen 1969–1990

Richard Serra

Kerouac, 2009

Paintstick on handmade Japanese paper

78 1/2 x 78 3/4 inches (199.4 x 200 cm)

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Since 1996, Serra revisited the circular format of “rounds” in various iterations. On view are two works from the artist’s 2009 series of Greenpoint Rounds, which measure approximately eighty inches square.

As Serra describes, “What I tried to achieve with the Rounds was to make the mass flood the paper. I am trying to obliterate the shape to the degree that what you're looking at is a black field in which a tremendous amount of matter is pulverized into the paper."

Installation view, Richard Serra: Drawings | Work Comes Out of Work, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz, Austria, 2008

Richard Serra

Cheever, 2009

Paintstick on handmade Japanese paper

76 1/4 x 76 inches (193.7 x 193 cm)

Richard Serra standing in front of Cheever (2009) in 2014. Photo by Cristiano Mascaro

Cheever (2009) was featured in a 2015 group exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, Switzerland, as well as Serra’s 2014 solo exhibition at the Instituto Moreira Salles in Rio de Janeiro.

Installation view, Richard Serra’s Cheever (2009), on view in Black Sun, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, Switzerland, 2015–2016

“[Serra’s drawings] are extraordinarily and complexly varied in the narrowed range in which they operate, precisely to focus on issues of origination. Their apparent simplicity, which interrogates form in such concentrated detail, is intellectually so rigorous, and experientially and emotionally so intense, so as to reach back to the beginnings of form, to experience it convincingly over and over again.”

—Bernice Rose, co-curator of Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective, The Menil Collection, Houston, 2012

Installation view, Richard Serra: Six Large Drawings, David Zwirner, London, 2024

Richard Serra

Triple Rift #2, 2018

Paintstick on four (4) sheets of handmade paper

9 feet 9 inches x 22 feet (3 x 6.7 m)

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In his catalogue essay for Serra’s 2017 solo exhibition at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, art historian Neil Cox writes that with the Rifts “Serra continues to work as a draftsman on a large scale. These polyptychs, drawn with prepared bricks of noxious black paintstick, made on huge sheets of handmade Japanese paper, were first shown in 2011. They are articulated by ‘rifts,’ very thin vertical triangles where the paper is left blank, intersections that mark out the point of division of the constituent sheets.”

Richard Serra

Double Rift #6, 2013

Paintstick on three (3) sheets of handmade Japanese paper

79 inches x 19 feet 7 1/4 inches (200.7 cm x 6 m)

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Richard Serra in front of Double Rift #6 (2013), on view in Richard Serra: desenhos na casa da Gávea, Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro, 2014. Photo by Cristiano Mascaro

Installation view, Richard Serra’s Double Rift #6 (2013), on view in Richard Serra: desenhos na casa da Gávea, Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro, 2014. Photo by Cristiano Mascaro

“My whole drawing practice is involved with repetition, knowing there’s no possibility of repeating, knowing that it’s going to yield something different every time.”

—Richard Serra in Conversations About Sculpture, 2018

Installation view, Richard Serra: Six Large Drawings, David Zwirner, London, 2024

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