Richard Serra – reviews of 'lyrical' large-scale sculpture

What you need to know

A new exhibition of sculpture by Richard Serra has opened at the Gagosian Gallery, London. American minimalist artist Serra is best known for large-scale abstract sheet metal assemblages, including eight sculptures permanently installed at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

His latest exhibition features four monumental metal sculptures: Backdoor Pipeline, Ramble, Dead Load and London Cross, so large that they required the demolition and reconstruction of most of the gallery's walls. There is also a five-metre work on paper by Serra at the Gagosian's Davies St space. Runs until 28 February.

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What the critics like

These works from a "titan of a sculptor" are rare as gigantism is essential to the vision, not a decadent offshoot of money or vanity, says Jackie Wullschlager in the Financial Times. Serra's "lyrical and liberating" show is a reminder that spectacle and theatre in a gallery really only satisfy when tied to formal seriousness and precise pleasures of mass, volume, materiality.

The septuagenarian American sculptor "can treat the most massive sheets of steel as though they are handy pieces of paper for his version of origami", says Marina Vaizey on the Arts Desk. His work is, as always, tense, frightening, alluring and tempting - hardly ever has a heavyweight operated with so light a hand.

Tension is a constant in Serra's work and his sculptures appear "delicate, precarious and utterly massive at the same time", says Nancy Durrant in The Times. The overall effect is one of disconcerted delight.

What they don't like

It's "hard to escape the conclusion that the scope of Serra's works has lessened in recent years", says Gabriel Coxhead in Time Out. Where Serra's previous work conveyed a sense of precariousness and excitement, some of these sculptures seem so tightly fixed within the gallery space that you never really sense danger or discomfort and it somehow all feels rather unsatisfactory.