A prodigious study in space, light and matter, Elevational Weights, Vertical Mass belongs
to Richard Serra’s eponymous series of paintstick drawings created in
2010. Delving ever-deeper in his investigation of the colour black,
Serra here allows the pigment to run across the quasi-totality of the
handmade paper, equating the paintstick’s density and thickness to
sculptural matter and thus transforming two-dimensional space into a
haptic arena. ‘In terms of weight’, he declared, ‘black is heavier,
creates a larger volume, holds itself in a more compressed field’
(Richard Serra, quoted in From the Collection: 1960-69, exh.
cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2016, n.p.). With the present
work, Serra substantiates his claim by endowing the penetrating hue with
a true weight; one that he dubs ‘elevational’, perhaps due to the
horizontal section of white paper that haloes the rest of the heavy
composition. A testament to the importance of this series within Serra’s
wider body of work, three examples from the artist’s collection were
shown at Serra’s first-ever retrospective of drawings, travelling from
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, to the San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art from October 2011 to June 2012.

Though he remains
principally recognised for his monumental steel and lead sculptures,
Serra has conceded that the medium of drawing was always the beating
heart of his artistic practice. ‘I've been drawing all my life’, Serra
once remarked. ‘Drawing is another way of thinking’ (Richard Serra, in
interview with Charlie Rose, 21 April 2011, video). With his paintstick
drawings, commenced in the mid-1970s, the artist employs the essential
tenets of drawing whilst retaining the charisma of sculpture,
materialised in the thickness of the applied matter. These works,
defined by their irregular surfaces and palpable appeal, are reminiscent
of Ha Chong-Hyun’s sensuous paintings; conveying varying impressions of
thickness, the Dansaekhwa artist’s idiosyncratic works are made by
applying colour on hemp-woven canvas from its verso. To achieve his
paintstick drawings, Serra employs a comparably physical method: first,
he melts down individual sticks and combines them into large paintstick
bricks, then he tackles the medium directly and with both hands. In this
way, he not only creates new visual forms and textures but more
importantly invents a whole new process, of which the present work is an
enthralling example.