LIMINAL SPACE

Richard Serra – Hitchcock, and Isamu Noguchi – Galvanized Steel Sculptures exhibition currently on view at Gemini G.E.L. (through November 2024, Los Angeles, CA) is a feast for the eye. For several reasons, and not all apparent.

The show unfolds like clockwork through Frank Gehry architecture. Climbing the slightly off-axis staircase with its rhythmic shadows—cast by the exposed wood structure—seems to prime the viewer for what would soon unfold upstairs.

The second-floor landing is very much the vestibule of a shrine where light and shadow are praised by the works of Serra and Noguchi.

Both artists are concerned with space. Through sculptural drawings—Serra— and steel sculptures—Noguchi—a very specific space is explored: the liminal space, the space at the edge.

Reality is observed while looking with one eye closed. Like we playfully do when we reduce the subject to its 2-dimensional essence reading its volume as a cut-out, as the shadow cast by its body.