Richard Serra: Drawings 2015-2017

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen presents Richard Serra: Drawings 2015–2017, the first public presentation of the artist’s most recent drawings. The exhibition, created in close collaboration with the artist, consists of more than 80 works, from smaller to large-scale drawings, including works from the Ramble drawings (2015), the Composites (2016), and the Rifts (2011–17). For this exhibition, Richard Serra has exclusively executed the series Rotterdam Horizontals (2016–17) and Rotterdam Verticals (2016–17), that will be shown for the first time, as well as a number of private sketchbooks never exhibited before.

Richard Serra: Drawings 2015–2017 provides a way to rethink our collective understanding of the medium of drawing, to take account of its potential to act on space and on the physical presence of the viewer. Constantly searching for new expressive languages, Serra has created many series of drawings that, while independent of his sculptures, correspond to the founding elements of his sculptural language: time, process, and materiality. The works presented in this exhibition depart radically from his previous drawings: they are intimate, direct and executed with an economy of means, and as such, reveal a characteristic to Serra’s output that is unknown to many.

Richard Serra: Drawings 2015–2017 attempts to reveal the breadth of Serra’s current practice. It also considers the depth of his work’s relationship to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, where, for nearly four decades, the artist’s Waxing Arcs (1980) has invited visitors to reckon with the museum’s architecture, the place of sculpture there, and the physicality of the very process of experiencing art. In expanding on these questions, the works in the exhibition constitute a critical reevaluation of the role and possibilities of drawing.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, published by Steidl Publishers, examining the artist’s drawing practice. The publication includes essays by Francesco Stocchi and Neil Cox, together with an updated, in-depth biography, or “Drawing chronology” by Michelle White.

Curated by Francesco Stocchi, Curator of modern and contemporary art at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

About Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
A visit to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is a wonderful journey through the history of art. Discover the extraordinary museum collection with its masterpieces spanning the centuries from Bosch, Bruegel, Van Eyck and Rembrandt to Salvador Dalí, Kees van Dongen, Edvard Munch and Charley Toorop. Next to Richard Serra’s Waxing Archs, Boijmans exhibits prominent installations of contemporary artists, among them Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room, Olaf Nicolai’s Apollo and Wieki Somers’ Merry-Go-Round Coat Rack. The collection with its world-class works of art is always on view, and there are spectacular and thought-provoking exhibitions to enjoy.