From the Art 21 website, I have chosen the artist, Richard Serra, to create a response piece. Richard Serra Is an artist that I have had learned about in my second year when learning about architecture. Seeing his work in Person at the Dia Beacon Museum, was quite an experience, the mass of steel curved into different shapes was mesmerizing and the ability to walk through them was also quite intriguing. However, while I was conducting my research on the five different artists, his work spoke to me less. I did enjoy learning about his process in the videos, yet the work was something that didn’t stand out to me.
His series of steel being bent and curved to create private spaces is interesting, but when looking at the work before finding that out, I was not sure what the purpose was creating it for. Many of the videos I looked at on the art 21 had a more in-depth meaning to the creation. Meaning some were focusing on social issues or issues that meant something to them. When I first looked at Richard Serra’s work, it just looked like what it is, metal plates. It didn’t really resonate with me as much as the other artists did.
The style of his work doesn’t really go with my style, but as mentioned before I like his thought process. He has a verb list in which he creates using that. For him, the verb list is what he uses as his inspiration. So for my project proposal, I believe I can combine these likes and dislikes of his work to create. A saying that Richard Serra had mentioned in the video was “It’s more about how do you use the material to help you communicate the idea clearer.” This I strongly agree with but with his work, it was still difficult for me to understand what he was communicating with.
For my project, I want to create something with the intention of writing my own verb list and using it as inspiration as Richard Serra did. I want to make something that someone could instantly understand what the intention was. I want to be able to create a space using this sort of organic-like forms as Richard Serra does. This is important to me because as I am studying architecture, I want to explore and experiment more with spaces. I think this is important not only for my understanding but for the exploration of different materials. So for my project, I would relate it to a few architecture elements such as space/form. I believe these are important to create my response piece. The larger theme I will be expressing is spaces of use. How would a person be able to move/navigate around a space, while using the inspiration of the verb list?
Materials that I am currently thinking of using are clay or wire and paper. I am more so leaning towards the use of clay due to having some leftover from the Urban Distillation project. I think using the clay will give mt the ability to manipulate different shapes to achieve the desired end result.
