Richard Serra

Gagosian Chelsea is pleased to present an exhibition of six new sculptures by Richard Serra. Torqued Spirals, Toruses and Spheres announces Serra’s involvement with new sculptural shapes and configurations.

In recent years Serra has explored the effects of torqued forms in a series of single- and double-torqued ellipses. The two torqued spirals in the present show, Bellamy and Sylvester, titled in honor of two recently deceased friends, turn the interior corridor of the double-torqued ellipse into a seemingly endless path into its core. In his text for the exhibition catalogue, Hal Foster vividly describes the experience of walking the spiraling path: “It is as if your body becomes its own roller coaster, one tracked not up and down but round and round.”

Betwixt the Torus and the Sphere and Union of the Torus and the Sphere introduce entirely new shapes into Serra’s sculptural vocabulary. For the first time he works with spheroid and toroid sections. In Betwixt the Torus and the Sphere, three toroid and three spheroid sections are assembled to create five unique passageways. In Union of the Torus and the Sphere, a toroid section and a spheroid section lock together to create Serra’s first sculpture with an interior volume that cannot be entered. Both of these sections, with their extreme lean, are freestanding.