Richard Serra | Hitchcock

The exhibition is a unique opportunity to view the artist’s latest prints, the ‘Hitchcock’ series (2024). This series is the culmination of extensive research and experimentation in printmaking over more than forty years of collaboration with the Gemini GEL workshop in Los Angeles, and embodies a radical and singular practice that has profoundly shaped the history of contemporary printmaking. For over 25 years, La Caja Negra has regularly presented Serra’s work.

The ‘Hitchcock’ series expands Serra’s exploration of the materiality of black and challenges traditional notions of printmaking.

Produced without a press, these works are the result of an intense manual process in which a dense mixture of black pigment, linseed oil, and molten wax—processed using a meat grinder and an industrial dough mixer with silica—is applied directly to paper. Layer upon layer, this material creates surfaces of striking intensity, almost sculptural in their presence. The omnipresent black absorbs and reflects light, generating an impression of monumental emptiness. He then applied the material to handmade Japanese paper, pressing it down in layers with a gloved hand. Each layer required weeks to dry before another could be added, creating a textured, almost sculptural surface.

The exhibition is completed with the ‘Right Angle series’ (2019). This series alludes to sculptural works from the 1960s created using steel plates at right angles. In this case, the prints are made using etching and oil stick on handmade paper.

Serra’s use of black is deeply intentional. In his words, “Black is a property, not a quality. In terms of weight, black is heavier, creates a greater volume, and remains in a more compressed field. It is comparable to forging.” This overwhelming density continues his artistic dialogue on gravity, tension, and materiality.

Perhaps the most striking juxtaposition in the exhibition is found in the photographs of Serra in the studio. His hands and clothing, stained with the thick, charcoal-like mixture, reveal the raw physical labor behind his art. The chaos of creation contrasts sharply with the precise, uniform edges of the final prints.

Richard Serra (1939–2024) is recognized as one of the most influential sculptors of the 21st century. His monumental works have been exhibited in the world’s leading museums, while his site-specific installations have transformed public and private spaces on every continent. He was the subject of two retrospectives at MoMA (1986 and 2007), as well as major exhibitions at the Guggenheim Bilbao, Kunsthaus Bregenz, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Grand Palais in Paris (“Monumenta,” 2008), and in the Qatari desert with East-West/West-East (2014). Serra also participated in four editions of Documenta (1972, 1977, 1982, 1987) and several Venice Biennales (1980, 1984, 2001, 2013), affirming his constant and essential presence in the contemporary art scene.