Richard Serra

So there's this guy who used to hurl molten lead into the corner of walls and floors. His name is Richard Serra.

 Not to be confused with Eric Serra, the composer of the Fifth Element soundtrack, which I really love some of.

Apparently the idea behind molten lead chucking against the wall was strictly about the process of what he was doing as opposed to the result. I guess I can respect that.


I like the idee-uh of his free-standing pieces quite a bit so let's look at those.

Fulcrum 1987, 55-foot freestanding sculpture of Cor-ten steel near Liverpool Street station

It's a cool idea to get sculptures to be self-supporting. Seems a tad dangerous, but I assume he's got it all figured out. I don't know if I'd want to just go hang out next to it though in case a strong wind storm came through or something.
It makes me wonder what his thought process was behind this piece. What was his intention with the piece? Did he have a conceptual meaning behind it or did he strictly like the visual qualities of it?
Here's another free-standing piece:

The Matter of Time at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

This is a series of 8 pieces on display.  I don't know if it was Serra's intention to focus only on visual qualities of shapes, but I can appreciate that. Sometimes, I really just like the emotional response I get from simple shapes and combination of shapes. Sometimes I prefer to create things of nonrepresentational shapes rather than representational because they evoke emotional responses on their own.