‘The general process that Serra uses to make this kind of drawing involves a viscous medium spread upon a horizontal surface, heavy sheets of handmade paper laid atop, and a set of metal weights that Serra uses as tools to press the paper onto the medium, adjusting them in his hand to control the degree and concentration of pressure. … Perhaps the most significant feature of these drawings is that they involve a transfer process: Serra works on the verso of each sheet until he intuits when he should stop. He then lifts the paper from the viscous material, which often collects in peaks and clusters that give these drawings their distinctly topographic surfaces. The results always contain an element of surprise, for Serra cannot know how each drawing will come out until he lifts the sheet and pins it to the studio wall. In that respect, the conventional temporal flow of drawing – the present-tense gathering of coherence, immediately apparent and adjustable – is disrupted and displaced.’

James Lawrence, ‘Accumulated Experience’, Richard Serra Drawings, Ordovas, 2021