NEW YORK, NY.- David Zwirner presents an exhibition of new drawings by Richard Serra at its 537 West 20th Street gallery.

Serra began creating drawings in 1971, and they continue to constitute an autonomous part of his practice. Often large in scale, the artist’s drawings are typically made with a thick impasto of black paintstick (or, more recently, lithographic crayons melted and formed into a brick), which is applied to a surface in broad, dense passages. Serra’s exclusive use of black in these abstract works absorbs and reduces light, conveying a sense of weight, gravity, and mass.

Begun in the summer of 2013, Serra’s “Symmetry” and “Reversal” drawings employ two identical rectangular sheets of paper that are adjoined in a vertical or horizontal format. In the “Symmetry” drawings, the white and black areas mirror one another in two symmetrically juxtaposed sheets. In the related “Reversal” drawings, from which the works in this exhibition are drawn, the black and white areas reverse themselves proportionally top to bottom (or left to right). The area that is black on the top (or left) sheet is white on the bottom (or right) sheet, and the area that is white on the top (or left) sheet is black on the bottom (or right) sheet in a figure/ground reversal. With these works, Serra expands upon his longstanding interest in the physical versus the cognitive perception of form.

A group of fifteen Vertical Reversal drawings was first presented at the Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro from May – September 2014 (Richard Serra: desenhos na casa da Gávea); the exhibition at David Zwirner additionally includes new Horizontal Reversals that have not previously been shown.

On the occasion of the exhibition, David Zwirner Books is publishing a catalogue that includes new scholarship by art historian Gordon Hughes.

Richard Serra’s (b. 1938) first solo exhibitions were held at the Galleria La Salita, Rome, 1966, and, in the United States, at the Leo Castelli Warehouse, New York, in 1969. His first solo museum exhibition was held at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1970. Serra has since participated in documenta 5 (1972), 6 (1977), 7 (1982), and 8 (1987), in Kassel; the Venice Biennales of 1980, 1984, 2001, and 2013; and the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Annual and Biennial exhibitions of 1968, 1970, 1973, 1977, 1979, 1981, 1995, and 2006.

Serra has had solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1977; the Kunsthalle Tübingen, 1978; the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 1978; the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1980; the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, 1984; the Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, 1985; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1986; the Louisiana Museum, Humlebæk, 1986; the Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, 1987; the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, 1987; the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 1988; the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 1990; the Kunsthaus Zürich, 1990; CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, 1990; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1992; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 1992; Dia Center for the Arts, New York, 1997; Centro de Arte Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro, 1997-98; Trajan’s Market, Rome, 2000; the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis, 2003; and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Naples, 2004.

More recently, in 2005 eight large-scale works by Serra were installed permanently at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and in 2007 The Museum of Modern Art, New York presented a retrospective of the artist’s work. His work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris in 2008 (MONUMENTA 2008: Richard Serra: Promenade); in 2011-12 the exhibition Brancusi-Serra traveled from the Beyeler Foundation, Riehen to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; and a traveling survey of Serra’s drawings was on view in 2011-12 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Menil Collection, Houston (which was the organizing venue).

In 2014, the Qatar Museum Authority presented a two-venue retrospective survey of his work at the QMA Gallery and the Al Riwaq exhibition space, Doha; also in Qatar, a new permanent, site-specific work, East-West/West-East was installed in the Brouq Nature Reserve in the Zekreet Desert. An exhibition of works on paper by the artist was presented at the Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro from May – September 2014.

This is the second exhibition at David Zwirner of Richard Serra’s work. In 2013, the gallery presented Richard Serra: Early Work, a critically acclaimed exhibition that brought together significant works from 1966-1971. The accompanying catalogue, published by Steidl/David Zwirner, extensively covers this period of the artist’s career with a compendium of archival texts and photographs and an essay by Hal Foster. In May 2015, the gallery will present an exhibition of new sculpture by the artist.