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wake, blindspot, catwalk, and vice-versa at gagosian gallery, 9/20–10/25/03
once i got fucked by a guy who was not richard serra, and the thing i remember most is the combination of how hard he was pounding me (my legs were over his shoulders and my butt cheeks were bruised the next day) and how gentle his face was (soft eyes, loving kisses). richard serra's four new sculptures, wake, blindspot, catwalk, and vice-versa, opening at gagosian gallery in chelsea, brings back the tender bullet of that brutishness and grace.
gay men and thin women glower when you walk into the chelsea art galleries where they work. it doesn't bother me anymore—ipods are magical at mitigating small talk and greeting, and most gallerinas look away, or duck back into their back offices, or let their tall reception desks obscure them as you walk in—but this art neighborhood can sometimes be a little too prissy for its own good. serra's work, particularly wake, exude masculine sinew; i can imagine an almost chemical reaction between hypermasculine and femininized sensibilities frothing up. it strikes me not just because the exhibit is striking, but because there's a pushed, rough-and-tumble feel, literally from the docks and piers of the hudson river, to the white-walled, tastefully hip scene of the far-west 20s.
luckily gagosian is used to and set up to show beefy art (they hosted serra's torqued spirals, toruses and spheres in october 2001), and while it's pushed to its limits by the four sculptures on display, i can't imagine any other space around here getting away with it. wake, the largest of the sculptures, consists of five pairs of locked toroid forms (each form is 14 feet high, 48 feet long, and six feet wide). it is inescapably nautical, with hull-like torques and skin-like rust suggesting that it hoisted its selves out of the river for this exhibition. blindspot instead references the shipyard, with a spiraling out from a visually elusive center. their scale, especially within the gallery walls, is exquisitely intimidating—forget the neighborhood's sexuality, i too feel a little bit like a wuss when this is towering over me. vice-versa follows similar gestures as wake, with two vertical sheets' slight curves opposing each other to create a corridor. catwalk (reverse camber) cuts its title off with a simple plane laid on the ground, but is the only work on display that diverges from curves and vertical shapes.
to see serra's work is to be humbled by it, but making yourself vulnerable like this also gives you rare opportunities to see the beauty of imposition. the difference between my small body and the sculptures is welcome rather than something to be nervous about it, while the pelvic curves and arcs reaffirm a confident, comfortable relationship with the body. the evident force required to bend steel into submission is in the air, but you can also feel the sensitivity that draws eloquence out of the structures. as if that guy fucking me turned into steel mid-thrust, but maybe metal can be this supple all on its own.
posted September 25, 2003 in art, delivery, print