Addison - Richard Serra: Large Scale Prints

Richard Serra: Large Scale Prints

Richard Serra: Large Scale Prints, organized by the Addison Gallery of American Art, marks the first American museum study of the artist's graphic oeuvre.

Although best known for his sculpture, Richard Serra began making prints in 1972. Since then his continued investigations into printmaking have produced an innovative body of work that is as large as it is varied. While Serra's prints explore the perceptual possibilities suggested by his sculptural work, they are not merely illustrative, but rather autonomous works of art that constantly push the media to its limits. Serra has earned a prominent position in the graphic art of the present day through prints whose forcefulness reach far beyond that of traditional graphics.

Conveying a sense of weight, instability, and potential motion, Serra's graphic works possess a physical presence that provokes reactions similar to those experienced in the presence of his sculptures. Whether small etchings or monumental silkscreens of up to 80 x 80 inches, the prints demand to be experienced both visually and physically. His strategic placement of forms at the point of greatest tension and use of thickly-layered black ink lend the two-dimensional works a materiality that imposes itself into the viewers' space making them aware of their own presence. Impossible to grasp in a single glance, the prints require the viewers to reposition themselves again and again before the work.

The exhibition consists of approximately 40 framed works chosen in consultation with the artist. Many of the works have been generously loaned to the exhibition by Paul J. Schupf, a major collector and supporter of contemporary art. Dating from the 1970s to the present, the prints included range from the early lithographs that relate to the artist's "wall props" and represent his first experiments with graphics, to the large and sensual paintstick on screenprints of the 1980s, such as Malcolm X and Clara, Clara, to 1990s works such as the Hreppholar series and the towering Esna that explore themes generated by his renowned sculpture, Afangar, located in the Icelandic landscape. The exhibition will conclude with the most recent prints of spirals inspired by his current sculptural series of torqued ellipses, and perhaps Serra's most lyrical work to date.

Richard Serra, Vesturey I, 1991, Etching with intaglio construction on Murillo and Meirat Velasquez handmade papers, 71 1/4 x 35 1/4 inches approx., collection of Paul J. Schupf, Hamilton, New York, ©1991 Richard Serra and Gemini G.E.L. LLC, Los Angeles

Considered by many to be the most important sculptor of the postwar period, Serra's work is in the collection of virtually every major museum. He has exhibited throughout the world. His recent group of works, the torqued ellipses, were shown at The Dia Center for the Arts in New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. In 1986 a retrospective of his work was held at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has created a number of site-specific sculptures in public and private venues in both North America and Europe. In 2001, Serra exhibited a new series of spirals at the Venice Biennale and was awarded the prestigious Golden Lion for lifetime achievement.After its presentation at the Addison, the exhibition will travel to the Snite Museum at Notre Dame University in Indiana and the Colby College Museum of Art in Maine.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with a foreword by Adam D. Weinberg, former director of the Addison Gallery and currently Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and essays by exhibition curator Allison Kemmerer, and Richard H. Axsom, Senior Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Grand Rapids Art Museum and Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of Michigan. A print specialist, Axsom is the author of the Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Stella print catalogue raisonnés among others.

Generous support for the exhibtion and publication is provided by J. Mark Rudkin, and Melissa C. Vail and Norman C. Selby.