Richard Serra: Sculpting Time & Space
Balance is everything, it’s the only way to hold on. But when walking through Richard Serra’s ‘The Matter of Time’ it’s necessary to leave behind every instinct of holding on. With a single stroke of metal space is sculpted, bent, hidden away or destroyed in a unique fashion that disorients the senses and slows down time.
Born in San Francisco in 1939, Richard Serra is one of those artists whose work you might’ve seen before but never really paid any close attention to. That was certainly the case for me and even after some research I really didn’t know whether or not this was worth further study. Because the thing about Serra (in contrast with other contemporaries) is that the experience of his works it’s not set out for you. Much like walking through his installations, there is no defined path towards meaning laid out by the artist. You need to craft your own path and it reflects in Serra’s reluctance to discuss his work beyond the materiality and the unique trouble of transportation logistics. I usually don’t fall for the ‘I’m an artist, I don’t have to explain myself’ narrative but there’s a sense of honesty in the work, there are several layers to the experience and most importantly there’s spirit in the steel.
‘The Matter of Time’ is one of Serra’s largest works, built in Germany and exhibited for the first time in the Guggenheim museum of Bilbao in 2005, it’s composed by eight metallic figures which surround and inhabit the space. A space so big that only an endeavor of this kind could successfully occupy it and will continue to do so until at least 2030. In the picture below you can get a very good sense of the dimensions of the work, of these giant sheets of steel (which are naturally heavy) but they defy their own nature by looking almost airy and soft, standing like sheets of paper which might very well fall with subtle breeze.
The experience is made up in part by the sculpture itself and in part by the negative space, that is, the space that is enclosed by it. A series of corridors that stretch, twist, and shift from broad to narrow, sometimes leading to a center enclosed by the steel walls. In a sense, these works are about intimacy between the viewer and the space, a sense of intimacy that evokes privacy and enclosure in the most positive end of the spectrum. It’s about silence, the type of silence which the simple absence of noise cannot achieve, a silence of the soul. It’s the reason why this is art, it’s why this is different from a light post or a metal door. There’s intimacy, there’s intent, and ultimately there’s an emotional response from the viewer.
If you think about it, the work sculpts a physical space around the viewer and an emotional space inside the viewer. A space that calms the mind and transcends from the physical realm, to the mental and ultimately spiritual ones. Serra has built this as a statement, a statement against the virtualization of art and the digitalization of experiences. At least, he has commented so on several occasions and there’s a lot that could be said about this, specially from the perspective of the new Metaverse, NFT’s, their ability to deliver real and valuable artistic experiences, about Simulacra & Simulacrum. However, I’ll limit myself to say this, Serra is both right and wrong by thinking poorly of the digital arts wave. It’s right in thinking that digital art might not be able to replicate something like this, the dimensions, texture and environment are just not there. But that doesn't mean digital art cannot produce other forms of aesthetic experience, not by trying to replicate current art forms but by creating new languages of experience and new tools focused less on distribution or reach and more on the experience itself and what it can communicate. Anyways, back to the matter at hand, ‘The Matter of Time’.
Because, what’s the matter with time? like I said before Serra’s work convey a sense of time slowed down. When you look at a picture, painting, film, song, or anything else really, there’s a faster tempo to it because you’re outside, you’re an observer of a narrative and narratives have a beginning and an end. But with Serra, you’re in it, you’re absorbed by the tempo of the space, and it’s so slow. There’s another layer of time involved in matter itself actually, the passage of time which oxidizes the steel. It’s known that Serra’s artworks change across time as they go by three separate stages. The first one (left) is the first and most natural stage of the steel recently casted and molded into being, the second one (middle) it’s characterized by this orange color and dusty texture to it and then the final stage (right) is composed by this dark tonality that makes the steel frames look almost like chocolate pieces. Each stage (depending on air and humidity) lasts around 5-8 years until reaching this final design.
In a sense it’s like a living thing, it changes across time in these three stages of dawn, day and dusk. Each stage produces a different experience in us, each color evokes different sensation when being surrounded by it. It’s solipsism, every experience is unique in form, path, color, and it ultimately it tells us more about ourselves than about Serra himself or about anything else. I love that, these works are about nothing and about everything, you get to choose. It’s a mirror, it’s a space where you reflect your own psyche, it allows for that.
Solid structures bigger than us surround us all the time, I’m talking about, government, money, country, religion, race, etc. But it’s through Serra’s work that they become visible, they are and you are around them. These inorganic objects convey an organic form and they change in a very organic way, much like the societal structures that shape us. These physical structures define the space around us and the relationships between us. Depending on the period of time we arrive to them we can have different aesthetic experiences and the lack of a defined path around them rhymes very well with the dynamics of life itself. This work is about everything and about nothing and that’s one of the hardest things to achieve.
Maybe the only argument against my own line of thought is the lack of interaction between people and the structures themselves, there’s no evidence that hundreds of people have been here across the years (like there is in real life) but then it comes down to the question of how much impact do we carry individually over them, it is only through the collective action of the air, humidity and time that they can change. Things each of us carry little by little across generations of visitors to this shared space.
Movement is also a very big part of the experience, nothing happens if you don’t move around. You need to walk around this maze-like structure, let yourself be surrounded and disoriented by its walls, breathe in and out continuously and follow this continuous discovering of what might hide in the next corner. And that’s very much what life is in the end, no? This reminds me of that. And if you’ve stayed static for too long, now it’s time to go on and continue moving.
NOTES:
I don’t know if I made Serra’s work justice through the photos I picked, so here’s a short selection of videos that can help on getting a clear view of Richard’s work (specially that last one):
I also made this small essay while listening to Frank Ocean’s ENDLESS album, It was fucking special and totally recommend it. Here’s the link to it:
In loving memory of Roberto Peña.