I found myself wandering in central London, looking for an exhibition on abstract photography as I have been working in photography lately, but I found none. All the photographic exhibitions there are at the moment are figurative or landscape. There is a big exhibition coming up of Wolfgang Tillmans's photographs which I look forward to seeing at Tate Modern in February. So I decided to view the exhibition by Richard Serra at the Gagosian Gallery in Mayfair, as his works are abstract.
I had not known there was a Gagosian Gallery in Mayfair; I knew their gallery in King's Cross - they seem to be popping up everywhere. The Gallery itself is just one room, a self contained space, with a clear front window that makes it look like a shop window.... See pic above.
Richard Serra is normally known for his large scale minimalist monochromatic works, made of lead and steal and site specific that you can't avoid, see pic above. They make you think of your own relation with the space and the work itself and ask for the viewer interaction. In this exhibition there were actually his drawings, black, monochromatic, minimalist, not large, lined up on the only three walls of the gallery in white frames in a way that demanded attention, see pic below. Due to the small area of the gallery and the fact that you are surrounded by the work and you are not allowed to sit down as there are no benches, you have to look at the work standing upright at eye level.
His large scale work is about the intensity of mass and weight and gravity, you always get a sense of materiality, it's all about physicality even in these drawings you feel it, even if they are on a much smaller scale and the hand made paper gives it a sense of fragility, this is due to the thick layering of the litho crayons and pastel powder; some are more dense then others, they relate to each other creating dense abstract images that draw you in; they are black but not bleak, I find them peaceful actually. I spent quite a while looking at them.
Squared and rectangular, closely framed together, I would have liked to see next to them his large drawings in a bigger space. I could imagine him spending hours working on the drawings especially the large ones see pic below. They should also have a bigger sign outside advertising the Gallery. When I went out I bumped into a couple American tourists and they were asking me if it was allowed to go inside the gallery, and they asked me whose work it was? They weren't sure if it was a gallery or not... Which I found funny because it is free to view the gallery but by having the doors shut one might not be inclined to know it. A friendly man opened the main door of the gallery to me straight away from inside, I felt more like I was stepping into Harrods or some expensive place where you have someone opening the door for you, but then again it is Mayfair after all.. It made me think also of how there is a lot of money in the arts but it is not well distributed, and of how some major galleries support famous artists that brings them more money instead of having a combination of strong artists and emerging artists.
I leave you with a quote by Richard Serra which I find inspiring:
'You have to have an internal necessity. If you decide early on that you want an alternate life, no matter your success or reward, you have to stick with it'.
But I still feel that is easier to stick with it for men than for women. Some major Galleries still represent more men then female artists, there is not a balanced ratio quota in terms of representation.
I have to say I enjoyed Rachael Withered's exhibition a while back at the Gagosian Gallery in King's Cross just as I enjoyed this exhibition of Richard Serra's drawings, I just wish there were more of them. The exhibition lasts till 17th December, do go and see it.
