Sequence

I'm glad I walked through Richard Serra's Sequence before seeing it from above. I'd been in similar installations in places that run together in my memory. I entered thinking it would be a short little corridor, flanked by the two massive pieces of iron that are the only materials in this sculpture. But the path on the interior was somehow longer than the outside appeared. I was stuck in a TARDIS of rust and birdshit that reached twenty feet in the air and stole my voice without an echo. I started to get nervous as I passed what I thought was the same set of footprints on one of the angled walls. The curves seemed to double back and repeat. Finally I saw the rest of the world again.

I don't know if this was just a moment of natural selection about to take place, penalizing me for my inability to accurately estimate distances, or if Serra somehow managed to distort space with his two pieces of metal. I do know that I was changed while inside. Not monumentally, but I came out different than I entered. And it feels stupid to say that after something so simple. It's not even a situation in which something can be beautiful in its simplicity, like a crystal or a seashell. The metal is almost aggressively ugly. But while inside, I realized there were gossamer strands that marked wide concentric circles in the curves of the metal. Some imperfection in the ore, I suppose. It was so insignificant a detail but strangely touching.

Serra's piece is different because so seldom does an artifice of its size and magnitude ever have so little of a purpose. This kind of scope is usually reserved for buildings or structures. Serra's is pointless. But you still give it the power to direct you and guide you, like you would a bridge or tunnel. Since you enter with no goal, you emerge without one either. But for some reason, you're not satisfied by that anymore. Sequence is abstract in such a way that it leaves the viewer abstract. And I still don't know how to feel about that.