Dia: Beacon

(if you search richard serra on google images, you can find many different images of his sculptures)

Richard Serra grew up in San Francisco working in steel mills. After studying in California, Yale University, and Paris, in the 1960s, he started working artistically with the steel and lead he had grown up working with. Many of his pieces were more about the process of creating it rather than the finished product. Considered a Minimalist, Serra’s works are extremely large, relatively simple metal objects. One of the pieces of his at the Dia, Torqued Ellipses, took four years in the late nineties to create. These ellipses are huge spirals that one can walk in. They curve in and out and are open in the center. When you walk inside of one it seems even bigger then when you looked at it from the outside. I love the immensity of Serra’s works and how they sort of engulf you as you enter. At times it feels as if the steel is closing in on you, but then you get to the center, which seems larger then possible.