Richard Serra

Cut redwood logs

Installation view

Ace Gallery Venice

Cut redwood logs

Second installation

Ace Gallery

Concrete

60" (H) x 90-240’ (W) x 8" (D) (Per Section)

Ace Gallery

Shift consists of six large concrete forms, each 8 inches thick and 60 inches high, zigzagging over about four hectares of rolling countryside. The work was commissioned in 1970 by art collector Roger Davidson and installed on his family property. In the summer of 1970 Serra and artist Joan Jonas visited the site, a 13-acre potato farm in King Township. They discovered that if two people walked the distance of the land towards each other while keeping each other in view, they had to negotiate the contours of the land and walked in a zigzagged path. This determined the topographical definition of the space and the finished work would be the maximum distance two people could occupy while still in view of one another.

Steel plates

Installation view

Ace Gallery Venice

Shift consists of six large concrete forms, each 8 inches thick and 60 inches high, zigzagging over about four hectares of rolling countryside. The work was commissioned in 1970 by art collector Roger Davidson and installed on his family property. In the summer of 1970 Serra and artist Joan Jonas visited the site, a 13-acre potato farm in King Township. They discovered that if two people walked the distance of the land towards each other while keeping each other in view, they had to negotiate the contours of the land and walked in a zigzagged path. This determined the topographical definition of the space and the finished work would be the maximum distance two people could occupy while still in view of one another.

Steel plates

26’ (H) x 10’ (W) x 3" (D) each

Ace Gallery Venice

Shift consists of six large concrete forms, each 8 inches thick and 60 inches high, zigzagging over about four hectares of rolling countryside. The work was commissioned in 1970 by art collector Roger Davidson and installed on his family property. In the summer of 1970 Serra and artist Joan Jonas visited the site, a 13-acre potato farm in King Township. They discovered that if two people walked the distance of the land towards each other while keeping each other in view, they had to negotiate the contours of the land and walked in a zigzagged path. This determined the topographical definition of the space and the finished work would be the maximum distance two people could occupy while still in view of one another.

Cor-ten steel

48" (H) x 48" (W) x 3" (D) each | 48" (H) x 48" (W) x 164" (L) overall

Ace Gallery

The compelling formal composition of <i>Four Plates Edges Up</i> – three four-foot square pieces of steel balanced on their three-inch wide edges to create a solid wall that supports, through brilliant engineering and balance, a fourth similarly sized square – is absolutely archetypal of Serra’s groundbreaking approach to monumental sculpture.