Minimalist sculptor Richard Serra has long been known for exploring the tension between the artwork and the viewer, especially in spaces where his works would rouse a cacophony of emotions or objections.

Emerging from the radical art movement of the sixties, Serra first explored this tension and element of instability by propping up four sheets of 2 x 2 ft lead; leaning against one another in One Ton Prop (1968) and a series of similar works, left the viewer with a sense of foreboding with the potential of the sculpture to collapse at any moment. Quickly progressing to larger scale structures, these provocative and groundbreaking experiments with industrial steel echo his lessons from the dancers of the Judson Church Group in the sixties from whom Serra comprehended weight, movement and gravity, fused it into his austere steel sculptures and this is no more evident than in Torqued Ellipses.

Driven by the idea that a generic form such as an ellipse could be torque on itself to produce a form not seen before, Serra conceived of this series in the mid 90’s but it was only after a long search that he found Beth Ship, a shipyard and rolling mill outside Baltimore which was willing to give shape to Serra’s thoughts and machine roll the Cor-ten steel to delicate curves.

Akin to dance and rhythm itself, each ellipse is unique in the way that it bends, tilts and curves inwards and out with soft ribbon like fluidity which belies its formidable strength. At 40 ton, 16 feet high, each Ellipse viewed in natural light and in its contained space has a different opening or entry point, its soft form enticing the viewer in. The experience of each Ellipse is different, emotionally or physically, the viewer is left disoriented; some feel a sense of acute claustrophobia while others feel a sense of safety within the enclosed sculpture. For the viewer who walks along its steel folds, the experience can be extremely disorienting and destabilizing. The revelation in itself is in the way the viewer finds or looses himself in relation to the massive sculptures, and in a way the experience becomes part of the work.

Standing unsupported on reciprocal pressure and balance, these works have been placed in the facility’s former train shed, in a space accommodating enough and kind enough to the sculptures. An intimate space dedicated solely to the experience Serra’s Ellipses, the formidable works cannot help but inspire a sense of awe. Serra’s relationship with his material goes back to the years when he was working in steel mills to support his college education. Upon winning the Fulbright Fellowship in 1964, which took him to Italy and Paris, he got the opportunity to visit Brancusi’s studio and catch glimpses of Alberto Giacometti at cafe La Coupole. Both of whom were influential in his evolution as an artist. During that time, on a fleeting visit to Spain, he chanced upon Velazquez's painting “Las Meninas”, a group painting in which the artist places himself in the background poised at his easel and Serra is struck by the use of this unconventional perspective. He was struck by how he, the viewer, became a part of the painting and describes the experience thus,
“I looked at it for a long time before it hit me that I was an extension of the painting. This was incredible to me. A real revelation. I had not seen anything like it before and it made me think about art, and about what I was doing, in a radically different way. But first, it just threw me into state of total confusion…In my later work, the person who is navigating the space, his or her experience becomes the content. So, the whole subject-object relationship is reversed. The content is you! If you don't walk into the work and engage with it, there isn't any content. That's really what I've been dealing with ever since I saw the Velazquez painting.”

Using his medium as a structure for communication with the exhibition space, its architecture or the lack thereof, Serra has constantly sought a way to confront, to involve, or to draw the viewer in and engage the artwork, the space and the viewer in a dialogue. From his Verb List and Lead Splashes in the late sixties, to his rolled Cor-ten Steel plates, Serra’s investigation of the processes of manipulating industrial materials, especially lead and steel has constantly challenged the aesthetics of sculpture within public and private spaces. With each attempt he defines sculpture through the sensations of touch, geometry, mass, gravity, enigma; sculpture which is experienced rather than passively observed.

“Time and movement became really crucial to how I deal with what I deal with, not only sight and boundary but how one walks through a piece and what one feels and registers in terms of one's own body in relation to another body.” -Richard Serra
(Sean O’Hagan, The Interview: Richard Serra, The Observer, 5th October 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/oct/05/serra.art)