Richard Serra is now showcasing his huge installation/sculpture, "A Matter of Time" at the Guggenheim Bilbao. The installation opened on June 8, and will be a giant addition to the museum's permanent collection.
Here is what the Guggenheim's website says about Serra's work:
"One of the preeminent sculptors of the 20th century, Richard Serra has long been acclaimed for his challenging and innovative work, which emphasizes the process of its fabrication, the characteristics of its materials, and an engagement with the viewer and site. As an emerging artist in the early 1960s, Serra helped change the nature of artistic production. He and the Minimalist artists of his generation turned to unconventional, industrial materials and began to accentuate the physical properties of their work. Relieved of its symbolic role, freed from the traditional pedestal or base, and introduced into the real space of the viewer, sculpture took on a new relationship to the spectator, whose phenomenological experience of an object became crucial to its meaning. Viewers were encouraged to move around —and sometimes on, in, and through— the work and encounter it from multiple perspectives."
It is certainly the ability of the viewer to participate with the sculpture, become a part of it, that makes the piece so interesting to me.
ArtMoCo elaborates on the participatory potential of the installation/sculpture:
"Imposing as they may be, the sculptures invite the viewer to become participant: to explore around them, to find the spaces within, to play with sound, to stop and start at any point, to move at any speed. Because of its mazelike structure, this installation will leave different imprints on every person that passes though the experience."Posted by Paul Hina at June 12, 2005 08:18 PM