DOHA: Final preparations are under way at Al Riwaq Doha exhibition space and QMA Gallery at Katara for two exhibitions featuring works of world-renowned artist Richard Serra to be displayed for the first time in the Middle East.
Opening on April 10, Serra brings together sculptures and drawings from different periods of his 50-year career, including works from the seminal One Ton Prop (House of Cards) of 1969, on loan from Museum of Modern Art, New York, to a new sculpture created for this exhibition.
Al Riwaq will house Serra’s new work, Passage of Time, made especially for the space that spans 5,000sqm. The sculpture is made up of two 66.5m long and 11.5m deep steel curves that snake diagonally through the site, fabricated in Germany at one of the very few steel mills that can take on such monumental works.
Alfred Pacquement, Honorary Director, National Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Curator of the exhibition, said: “Passage of Time invites the viewer first to walk around it, apprehending it from the outside and noting its alternating convexities and concavities. Then, in a process dear to the artist, the viewer gains a completely different view of the sculpture by entering the narrow space between its two high curving walls. The dimensions of Passage of Time, whose title alludes explicitly to its length, are crucial to the viewer’s interaction with it. The time of the work can only be understood by spending time with it.”
Showing alongside Passage of Time, QMA Gallery will exhibit seven sculptures and four large-scale drawings in the artist’s signature medium of black paintstick, to present the main stages in the development of his works.
This will be Serra’s second project in Doha following the 2011 installation of 7, a vertical steel sculpture in Museum of Islamic Art Park.
The Peninsula
