Doha, QATAR — Richard Serra was feted in Qatar this week with the opening of several exhibitions in venues around the capitol Doha. The renowned American sculptor was on hand as his “East-West/West-East” was unveiled in the desert about 40 miles from Doha.
The work, commissioned by the emir’s sister, Sheikha al-Mayassa bint Hamad al-Thani and the Qatar Museums Authority she heads, consists of four massive steel plates of varying heights of about 50 feet that rise from the desert sands. Serra walked through the permanent installation in the desert with dignitaries and reporters telling them why he selected the location based on the view and landscape.
“When I first came here, Sheikha al-Mayassa asked me… if I want to build a piece in the landscape and I said, what landscape?”, said Serra during his remarks at the unveiling. “And she said the desert. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what the desert was all about here.” Serra says he toured four different deserts with a Bedouin and kept returning to the same spot in the Brouq Nature Reserve, where a peninsula juts out into the waters of the Gulf, “like a finger separating the sea on the East and the sea on the West.”
The unveiling of the sculpture was set to coincide with Serra’s first solo exhibition in the Middle East at the Al Riwaq Doha Exhibition Space and QMA Gallery at Katara, entitled “Passage of Time”. The new large-scale work is comprised of two 220-foot long and 13-foot-high steel curves “that snake through the exhibition space” and around works from the artist’s 50-year career.
Both entitled “Richard Serra”, the two exhibitions are curated by Alfred Pacquement, former director of the National Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou in Paris. The shows run through July 6.
Read ARTINFO Q & A with Richard Serra in Qatar HERE.
