RICHARD SERRA: NOTEBOOK DRAWINGS
Gemini G.E.L. is pleased to present Notebook Drawings, a series of eight new etchings by Richard Serra.The prints will be on view in Gemini’s gallery from January 25 through April 5, 2024. In celebration of the LA FriezeArt Fair, Gemini will have special Saturday hours on March 2nd starting at 11am, and will host a reception 4:00pm to 6:00pm. To create this project, aptly titled Notebook Drawings, Richard Serra referenced a series of drawings which he created in an intimate, pocket-sized, notebook. Serra often spends time with his sculptures, drawing in order to reflect and rethink the completed work, and these prints suggest the form and radiating heat of massive solid steel sculptures as they emerge from the forging process. All eight drawings appear very spontaneous and likely were executed quickly and simultaneously, and the challenge in making the etchings was to capture that spontaneity and evoke the smudges of the charcoal drawings. The textures which were chemically etched into the copper printing plates by Xavier Fumat, Master Printer and Serra’s longtime Gemini collaborator, are very tight and organic, and were taken from rubbings off asphalt in the Gemini parking lot. The images in all except two are shifted to the right (interestingly, two are nearly centered on the paper) and all are weighted at the bottom of the sheet of Fuji Kozo DHM-11 handmade paper. Printed by Fumat and his assistant Brennan Johnson in limited editions of 40 each, the artist’s approval has been screenprinted on the verso of each impression; the impression number is added in pencil by Gemini G.E.L. In conjunction with the Notebook Drawings, the exhibition will showcase a curated collection of previous editions by Serra. Featured are selections from earlier series such as the monumental oil stick works titled Casablanca (2022), the dynamic and textured Composites (2019), the exploration of manipulated perception of weight and mass in Equals (2018), and the harmoniously balanced forms of Horizontal Reversals (2017).
Richard Serra (b. 1939-2024, San Francisco California) is one the most significant artists of the 21st century. He has exhibited extensively in major museums and has created site-specific sculptures for both public and private venues across the world. Serra’s work has been the subject of two retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, the first in 1986 and the second in 2007. Other major recent exhibitions include the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain (1999); American Academy in Rome, Italy (2000); Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri (2003, 2014); Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Italy (2004); “Richard Serra Drawings— Work Comes Out of Work,” Kunsthaus Bregenz (2008); “Promenade,” Monumenta, Grand Palais, Paris (2008); “Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2011), traveled to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; and The Menil were installed as part of the inaugural exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. East-West/West-East (2014) was permanently installed in the desert of the Brouq Nature Reserve in western Qatar in 2014. Serra has participated in dOCUMENTA in 1972, 1977, 1982, and 1987; and in the Biennale di Venezia in 1980, 1984, 2001, and 2013. In 2015, Serra was awarded Les Insignes de Chevalier de l’Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur, France. Serra lives and works in New York and on the North Fork of Long Island.