Executed in 2011, Untitled (#34) provides a deep insight into Richard Serra’s world of drawing and is an intimate product of his contemplative practice, unleashed through a moment of energy and action. Describing drawing as a meditative exercise, the artist comments: “What I continually find to be true is that the concentration I apply to drawing is a way of tuning or honing my eye. The more I draw, the better I see and the more I understand” (Richard Serra quoted in: Exh. Cat. Tübingen, Kunsthalle Tübingen; Baden Baden, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Richard Serra, March - May 1978, p. 227).

Captured in jet-black paste is the momentum of its coiling form, an acceleration of the circular motion as the artist draws across the surface of his worktop. The present work is created by spreading viscous paste of silicon ink and paint stick onto a flat surface and then pressing a piece of paper onto it using his body or a block of steel. Exuding from the depths of the textured surface are the forces of weight, mass, and gravity - the essential properties of Serra’s practice. The force with which Serra pushes the thick paste across the worktop and the resistance of the black paste as the paper is slowly pulled away, are all captured through the delicate cracks. The resulting work is a drawing eternally suspended in a moment of tension as black paint of the worktop surface tugs away at the fibres of the paper, leaving ridges of a thick, black mass that will forever defy its weight and gravity.

Drawing is implied in all of Serra’s working processes and is an integral activity that lies at the heart of the artist’s conceptualisation of form. Drawing, to Serra, is cutting a sheet of lead to create an edge and rolling steel to define the interval between its concentric circles. Drawing in the present work is more than the creation of its own form; the spiraling line defines the movement of the artist’s gesture, constructing the edges of his motion in real space. This is “drawing in sculpture”, and simultaneously a sculpture in drawing. Serra once declared, “when I talk about drawing I don’t mean drawing as a discipline different from that of painting and sculpture. There is the drawing of drawing and there is drawing in painting, as there is drawing in sculpture… Drawing defines how one collects material through scale, placement, and edge” (Richard Serra quoted in interview with Nicholas Serota, Exh. Cat., London, Tate, Richard Serra: Weight and Measure 1992, London 1992, p. 21).

The multiple steps involved in the process of creating this work on paper provide space for spontaneity and organic reactions between the paint, paper, and Serra’s physical movement. This is perhaps most pronounced in the process of imprinting the paintstick, whereby the artist relies on the tactile feeling of paint beneath the paper and weight of his body, to imprint the mark on paper. Unlike the cold echoes of steel, paper provides qualities of intimacy, a sense of personal touch that industrial metal cannot deliver. Indeed, one can imagine feeling the dense mass of the paintstick as it softly compresses beneath the paper, the warmth of the paper as the hand rubs against its smooth surface, and the wet sounds of paint unsticking as the paper is slowly peeled away. It is this warmth that imbues the present work with a unique vitalism that radiates beyond its edges. This dynamism gives Serra’s drawing a unique quality of monumentality, transposing the gravitas of steel onto paper.