Centre Pompidou, Paris, to Screen Complete Film and Video Works of Richard Serra

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PARIS, January 6, 2021—In conjunction with the installation of Richard Serra's sculpture Transmitter (2020) at Gagosian, Le Bourget, the Centre Pompidou and Gagosian will present a four-day retrospective of the artist's films and videos on January 5, 7, 8, and 9, 2022. This is the first time that all of Serra's #film and video work will be shown together in Europe. Drawing from the collections of the Centre Pompidou; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Anthology #film Archives, New York, the screenings will be introduced by esteemed curators and scholars. The sixth and final screening features experimental cinema from the Centre Pompidou's collection by artists who have inspired Serra's own #film and video work, as discussed in a conversation between Serra, Annette Michelson, and Clara Weyergraf published in the journal October in 1979. The event is free and open to the public. Space is limited and will be granted on a first-come, first-served basis. Between 1968 and 1979, in parallel with other artists of the post-Minimalist generation including Dan Graham, Joan Jonas, and Bruce Nauman—and particularly Yvonne Rainer and Michael Snow—Serra worked to expand the boundaries of #film in the context of visual art. He began experimenting with the 16mm #film format while also engaged in the construction of "process pieces" such as Belts (1966–67) and One Ton Prop (House of Cards) (1969), in which he underscored sculpture's material properties with physical actions such as cutting, winding, bending, and stretching. Hand Catching Lead, Hand Lead Fulcrum, Hands Scraping, and Hands Tied, four short films made between 1968 and 1969, represent his first forays into the medium and herald an extensive and influential body of work. While these early examples tend to revolve around simple, rapid, repeated actions with clearly defined end points, other of Serra's films such as Surprise Attack (1973) and Television Delivers People (1973) adopt more complex structures and themes with more overt societal points of reference. Serra has always insisted that his films were not intended to be extensions of his formal sculptural practice but rather exist entirely on their own terms. As Carlos Valladares writes, the films "call attention to themselves as films, but always with the political and the artistic on nearby parallel tracks." What these works do have in common with Serra's better-known three-dimensional projects is a commitment to presenting audiences with tasks of endurance and perception that render artistic and institutional structures transparent.

Further information in the press release to download