Richard Serra

Last spring I visited the DIA Beacon and really admired what I saw.  For a while I had been interested in Minimalist Art and enjoyed reading/listening about it in class, but actually seeing it in person, which is the point of this art, was even better.  Walking through Serra's torqued spirals was a lovely experience, especially being the only one occupying it.  The giant walls tilted at an angle feel like they were enclosing me in this small space.  Not being able to see around the dark turn added to this sense of  calming uneasiness.  I use that word because I knew I was safe in this environment, yet I couldn't help to pretend that I would actually get trapped in here.  Walking in this enormous circle felt like I was in there for a long time, yet the walk was brief.  When I reached the center of the sculpture it opened up slightly and I was able to look up at the entirety of the piece.  

"Richard Serra has long been acclaimed for his challenging and innovative work, which emphasizes the process of its fabrication, characteristics of materials, and an engagement with viewer and site. In the early 1960s, Serra and the Minimalist artists of his generation turned to unconventional, industrial materials and began to accentuate the physical properties of their work. Relieved of its symbolic role, freed from the traditional pedestal, and introduced into the real space of the viewer, sculpture took on a new relationship to the spectator whose phenomenological experience of an object became crucial to its meaning. Viewers were encouraged to move around—and sometimes on, in, or through—the works, many of which cannot be fully understood without peripatetic examination. Over the years Serra has expanded his spatial and temporal approach to sculpture and has focused primarily on large-scale, site-specific works that create a dialogue with a particular architectural, urban, or landscape setting."