Richard Serra, Transmitter @ Gagosian Le Bourget

Richard Serra, Transmitter, 2020

Last weekend, I ventured out to Le Bourget with my friend Sylvie for an initiation into Gagosian's space in a former airplane hangar. It's quite a trip out to the northern suburbs of Paris by train, and then bike for a few kilometres to the small airport. On arrival, it was a different world, until of course, we stepped inside Gagosian's space. It was like being back in the centre of Paris, surrounded by familiar white walls, skylit space and hip, surly gallery staff. I had anticipated a much bigger space, and surprised to see that the gallery was not so much bigger than Gagosian's London galleries.

Gagosian @ Le Bourget

Serra's sculpture itself was magnificent, of course. The dizzying, nausea-inducing lean of the Corten steel was intense, and the journey of discovery through corridors, opening out onto two circular enclaves where the visitor was invited to rest and relax, only to be pushed out through the sense of instability was unsettling. We wanted to stay, but on discovery that there was nowhere to sit because of the awkward lean of the steel, we were left with no choice but to keep moving. The narrower the corridor, the faster we moved.

As the only visitors to the gallery, Sylvie and I had fun with the echoes and reverberations of sound that must have been Serra's intention, though it's difficult to know if he sculpted the steel knowing the visitor would create echoes and voice modulations. But surely, a work titled Transmitter is designed to create a sound scape? The sonic element made the piece a departure from other Serra sculptures I have experienced: the steel curves, ribbons, caves and canyons becoming a device for transmitting data through sound waves lift sculpture to a whole new level. I could almost feel the sensations of being in a chasm, then a gorge, then in a clearing in the wild, alone, isolated within the space. 

 

The echos were long and resonant, changing tone, volume, and density as we moved through different spaces, again, dependent on the curve of the steel, the width of the corridor, the lean of the steel opposite where we were standing. As is always the case inside Serra's sculptures, I felt my body transformed, my senses brought alive. It was an incredible experience. Sadly, the wonder of discovery mixed with the disorientation that comes with physical movement in a Serra sculpture was cut short. As we were having fun with our voices, feeling the reverberations as though we were lost in the outback, the young man from the gallery's front desk came running to find us. Apparently, it wasn't permitted to make such noises in the gallery. The irony was not lost on us: as we were engaging with a work titled Transmitter in an airplane hangar stretching the length of a city block, the only visitors in the gallery, that we were asked to lower our voices. I would have thought that our physical responses to the works was exactly the point of it?

And so, not to be defeated by what seemed like the illogical orders of the gallery, Sylvie and I moved up close to experience the weathered, changing surface with other of or senses.

I ran my fingers across the rough metal until they reached its seams, and when I removed my hands, they were orange. We stood back and watched the light streaming in through the roof as it changed the colour of the sculpture from orange to brown, to tan, to a deep dark black when seen from certain angles. Ultimately, the physical relationship struck up between Serra's sculpture and the visitor is magnetic. When our bodies move around, through, up close and away from Transmitter, our senses are so enlivened that, like filings to a magnet, nothing can break the pull and the revelation of being in its presence.