Richard Serra at the Grand Palais

Sarah-Neel Smith writing for I V Y Paris

Faced with the vastness of the ocean, who hasn't at some point felt very, very small? As he planned his installation for the yearly Monumenta series at the Grand Palais, Richard Serra felt similarly overwhelmed -- "submerged" -- in the venue's enormous, glass-encased space.

The artist's word choice is evocative. It is easy to imagine that the five mammoth steel slabs which make up Serra's final project, Promenade, have floated down through equally vast depths, lodging in the Grand Palais as if on the ocean floor. Slightly askew and sunk into the ground, they appear to stand upright only by dint of their own great weight.

Promenade might not be so impressive if it was outdoors (like Serra's 55-foot tall Fulcrum at London's Liverpool Station). Most city-dwellers no longer feel dwarfed by the skyscrapers which surround them, and Serra's gigantic installations sometimes blend so well into their urban environment that they disappear. But the combination of Promenade's steel slabs and the Grand Palais' soaring 1900 architecture actively reminds the visitor of their own tremendous smallness. At the same time, the Grand Palais' transparent walls allow one to see through to an even vaster expanse just beyond -- the sky.

Comments

[suzanne]

magnifique, another must see

[simon]

I remember seeing the restoration work in 2004! Amazing for real!

[jaspert]

Contemporary art Paris rock painting visual culture