DOHA: Following the unveiling of his latest installation in Qatar, Richard Serra yesterday opened two exhibitions, the most comprehensive showcase and his first in the Middle East.
His first public commission in Qatar was his 2011 installation of 7, a vertical steel sculpture in the Museum of Islamic Art Park.
Jean Paul Engelen, Director of Public Art Programmes, Qatar Museums Authority (QMA), told a press conference yesterday: “It is important to do an exhibition to show a wider context of the work of Serra, one of the most important artists of his time.”
Engelen said education would be integrated in the expos as education is a key part of QMA’s Public Art Department.
“As with other shows we have a big education programme. We had over 6,000 schoolchildren in the previous show and we are aiming to top that,” he added.
The exhibition inaugurated at QMA Gallery at Katara brings together a fascinating selection of sculptures and drawings from different periods of Serra’s 50-year career, including works from the seminal One Ton Prop (House of Cards) of 1969, on rare loan from Museum of Modern Art, New York, alongside his more recent work (Double Torqued Ellipse III, 1999), to present the main stages in the development of his work.
Meanwhile, Al Riwaq, a temporary exhibition space in the centre of Doha, hosts Serra’s new work, Passage of Time, made specially for the space that spans an area of 5,000sqm. The sculpture is made up of two 66.5-metre long and 4.1-metre tall weather-proof steel curves that snake diagonally through the site, and was fabricated in Germany at one of the very few steel mills that can take on such monumental steel works. Both spaces have been curated by Alfred Pacquement, Curator and former director of National Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, Paris. Serra at QMA Gallery at Katara and Richard Serra at Al Riwaq Doha exhibitions are open to the public until July 6.The Peninsula
