3437 - RICHARD SERRA

RICHARD SERRA (San Francisco 1939–2024 Orient) Torus III. 2000. Paintstick on paper. Dated, signed, and inscribed with a directional arrow on the reverse: 2000 R Serra. 67.8 × 86 cm. Certificate: Richard Serra & Galerie m (gallery certificate), Bochum (copy available). Provenance: - Artist’s studio. - Galerie m, Bochum. - Private collection, Switzerland, acquired from the above gallery at Art Basel in 2002. We thank the Richard Serra Studio for their kind assistance. The work is recorded in the artist’s archive under no. RS-1620. “There is no way to make a drawing—there is only drawing,” Richard Serra explained in 1977. The quotation highlights a central aspect of his drawings: for Serra, drawing is not merely the visualization of an idea that has already been developed, but an independent creative process. Since the early 1970s, drawing has constituted an autonomous part of his body of work, formally and conceptually closely connected to his sculptures without being subordinate to them as designs or preliminary studies. In both media, Serra explores fundamental questions of weight, density, balance, and the physical perception of form in space. From the mid-1970s onward, Serra favored black paintstick for his drawings—a solid mixture of pigment, oil, and wax. The material can be applied like paint, but it can also be pressed, rubbed, and worked into the surface. His paintstick drawings thus take on a pronounced physical, almost sculptural quality. Black appears not merely as a color, but as dense, light-absorbing matter that conveys a peculiar heaviness even on the flat surface of the paper. In “Torus III,” this conception of drawing encounters an elementary geometric form. A torus is a ring-shaped solid produced by rotating a circle around an axis outside its plane. Even mathematically, the form is thus the result of movement, a central concern in Serra’s work. Through the application of paint, however, this basic geometric form loses its mathematical perfection. The surface is neither perfectly smooth nor homogeneous; concentrations of material, irregularities, and traces of the working process make the production visible. At the same time, Serra contrasts the closed circular form with the trapezoidal format of the paper. Black mass and white surface, curvature and angular support stand in a relationship of tension. The paper contributes significantly to the sculptural effect. Serra’s engagement with circles, ellipses, and curvature took on particular importance beginning in the 1990s. In the “Rounds” produced in 1996 and 1997, he systematically explored circular and elliptical forms and their relationship to the rectangular paper format. At the same time, he created his first “Torqued Ellipses.” In these monumental steel sculptures, a recognizable basic geometric form is spatially transformed through torsion and inclination. As viewers walk through and around the sculptures, their perception of the form changes depending on their vantage point. Geometry serves as the starting point, but the spatial effect unfolds only through the viewer’s movement. In “Torus III,” this same exploration appears in concentrated form on paper: as an interplay of geometric order, material density, and spatial perception.