Richard Serra: Steve Reich’s “Music for Pieces of Wood”
In this video, musical ensemble Sō Percussion performs Steve Reich’s “Music for Pieces of Wood” inside the exhibition Richard Serra: Running Arcs (For John Cage), 1992, at Gagosian, New York.
Every act of destruction is also an act of creation. To destroy is to open up a space, to clear a path for something new.
—Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 1968
This group exhibition presents a conversation between postwar artists who challenged the conventions of form, material, and perception, highlighting the evolution of their practices. On view from April 2 through May 31, the installation gathers defining works by Walter De Maria, Lucio Fontana, Donald Judd, Piero Manzoni, Mario Merz, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra, and Andy Warhol.
These works reveal how repetition in art can redefine perceptual and formal possibilities, examining how artists have employed seriality, variation, and accumulation to destabilize conventional patterns of sight and thought. Picasso’s declaration “In my case, a picture is a sum of destructions” resonates with the thinking of Gilles Deleuze. Parallelling the philosopher’s inquiries into differentiation and iteration is Serra’s credo that “Repetition is the ritual of obsession.”
Picasso’s turn to sculpture, Judd’s modular and serial structures, Serra’s insistence on process and his relentless exploration of materiality, and De Maria’s durational works and sculptures demonstrate that repetition is never static, but rather a force of renewal. Fontana’s Concetto spaziale works are pierced, opening the picture plane up to infinite space, while Manzoni’s Achrome series negates color, representation, and allusion to emphasize material presence. Rauschenberg and Merz radically reconfigure everyday objects in their art, whereas Warhol’s multiplication of images displaces their received meanings in favor of new interpretations. Together they offer a timely reflection on the cyclical nature of artistic innovation and the shifting relationships between past and present.
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In this video, musical ensemble Sō Percussion performs Steve Reich’s “Music for Pieces of Wood” inside the exhibition Richard Serra: Running Arcs (For John Cage), 1992, at Gagosian, New York.
Join exhibition curator Donna De Salvo as she discusses her selection of the artist’s rarely seen sculptures, drawings, films, and archival materials in Walter De Maria: The Singular Experience at Gagosian, Le Bourget. Chief among these is Truck Trilogy (2011–17), De Maria’s final sculpture and the centerpiece of the exhibition.

The Fall 2025 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Andy Warhol’s Blue Liz as Cleopatra (1962) on the cover.

Carlos Valladares tracks the artist’s engagements with Hollywood glamour, thinking through the ways in which the star system and its marketing engine informed his work.

The Summer 2025 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Pablo Picasso’s Nu accoudé (1961) on the cover.

On April 18, the exhibition Picasso: Tête-à-tête opened at Gagosian, New York. Including works from 1896 to 1972, the full span of the artist’s career, the show is presented in partnership with Paloma Picasso, the artist’s daughter. Here, Michael Cary, one of the organizers of the exhibition, traces the historical precedents that informed the conversational nature of the curation. He also introduces a translation of a 1932 interview with Picasso by the publisher and critic E. Tériade, often quoted in English in part but not in full.

The Fall 2024 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Andy Warhol’s Mao (1972) on the cover.

Jessica Beck examines Andy Warhol’s return to painting in the 1970s, focusing on the artist’s Mao series.
In this video, Flavin Judd, the artist’s son and artistic director of Judd Foundation, discusses a historic large-scale work by his father from 1970, ahead of its presentation at Art Basel Unlimited 2024.
Join president of the Picasso Museum, Paris, Cécile Debray; curator, writer, biographer, and historian Annie Cohen-Solal; art historian Vérane Tasseau; and Gagosian director Serena Cattaneo Adorno as they discuss A Foreigner Called Picasso. Organized in association with the Musée national Picasso–Paris and the Palais de la Porte Dorée–Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris, the exhibition reframes our perception of Picasso and focuses on his status as a permanent foreigner in France.

Cocurator of the exhibition A Foreigner Called Picasso, at Gagosian, New York, Annie Cohen-Solal writes about the genesis of the project, her commitment to the figure of the outsider, and Picasso’s enduring relevance to matters geopolitical and sociological.

Andy Warhol’s Insiders at the Gagosian Shop in London’s historic Burlington Arcade is a group exhibition and shop takeover that feature works by Warhol and portraits of the artist by friends and collaborators including photographers Ronnie Cutrone, Michael Halsband, Christopher Makos, and Billy Name. To celebrate the occasion, Makos met with Gagosian director Jessica Beck to speak about his friendship with Warhol and the joy of the unexpected.
In this video, Jessica Beck, director at Gagosian, Beverly Hills, sits down to discuss the three early paintings by Andy Warhol from 1963 featured in the exhibition Andy Warhol: Silver Screen, at Gagosian in Paris.

The Winter 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Anna Weyant’s Two Eileens (2022) on its cover.

The definitive monograph on the work of Walter De Maria was published earlier this fall. To celebrate this momentous occasion, Elizabeth Childress and Michael Childress of the Walter De Maria Archive talk to Gagosian senior director Kara Vander Weg about the origins of the publication and the revelations brought to light in its creation.
Violinist Alina Ibragimova performs Bach’s Sonata for Solo Violin No. 1 in G Major: Adagio (BWV 1001, c. 1720) from within Richard Serra’s sculpture Transmitter (2020) at Gagosian, Le Bourget. Organized by Bold Tendencies, a nonprofit organization that commissions artists to produce site-specific projects and present performances, in collaboration with Gagosian, this recorded performance took place on May 8, 2022 before a live concert of Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time, 1941).
Cellist Mario Brunello performs Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major: Prelude (BWV 1007, c. 1717–23) within Richard Serra’s sculpture Transmitter (2020) at Gagosian, Le Bourget. Organized by Bold Tendencies—a nonprofit that commissions artists to produce site-specific projects and present performances—in collaboration with Gagosian, this recorded performance took place on May 8, 2022, before a live concert of Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time, 1941).

The Fall 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Jordan Wolfson’s House with Face (2017) on its cover.

In this second installment of a two-part essay, Julian Rose continues his exploration of Donald Judd’s engagement with architecture. Here, he examines the artist’s proposals for projects in Bregenz, Austria, and in Basel, arguing that Judd’s approach to shaping space provides a model for contemporary architectural production.

Pieter Mulier, creative director of Alaïa, presented his second collection for the legendary house in Paris in January 2022. After the presentation, Mulier spoke with Derek Blasberg about the show’s inspirations, including a series of ceramics by Pablo Picasso, and about his profound reverence for the intimacy and artistry of the atelier.