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Crazy Pablo: The Matter of Time
Sensations, emotions, every part of us holds traces of what we’ve lived through, simply by moving through the world. Following our last dive into Spiral Jetty and the physical experience of art, here’s another piece that you don’t just see.
Inbal Zakai
January 11, 2026
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Time You Can Walk Through: Shaped in Steel
The Matter of Time by Richard Serra, housed permanently in the largest gallery of the Guggenheim Bilbao, is an installation made of weathered steel - but it’s really made of space. As you walk inside these spiraling, torqued ellipses and curves, you feel time stretch and compress. Sound shifts. Light disappears. You lose your sense of orientation.
Fun Fact
Each sculpture in The Matter of Time weighs tons and was produced with the help of shipbuilders using industrial software (CATIA) to calculate the tilt and curve of each plate. The material, weathered steel, oxidizes over years, slowly changing color from gray to orange to deep brown. The rust isn’t just surface: it’s time made visible. Serra said: “I consider space to be a material.”
Think About ItIt’s about experience. Serra starts from the inside. He sculpts voids, not solids. The visitor doesn’t stand outside the work and interpret it. They enter it. The Matter of Time invites you to feel space, gravity, disorientation and transformation. And it only works over time. Like time itself, the steel shifts, rusts, softens. Serra reclaims materials from architecture and engineering, not to build, but to undo our sense of what’s stable. It’s not just conceptual; it’s phenomenological. You don’t think it. You feel it. |
How does it relate to the here and now? or What to say during casual conversation to show off your art knowledge?
The Body Remembers - “I read this thing about Richard Serra’s steel sculptures and it really stuck with me. Like, it made me think how our bodies don’t just see things, they feel them. That kind of art isn’t just visual, it’s physical. And those feelings? They stay with you, sometimes more than the images.”
Now have another Look!
And If You’re Up for More…
A monumental weathered steel sculpture installed in 1987 near Liverpool Street Station in London’s Broadgate district. Its towering presence invites you to walk around and beneath its massive plates, a classic example of Serra’s engagement with space and gravity.
Located near La Défense (the business district of Paris), Slat is a group of Cor‑Ten steel plates arranged in a prism‑like form that visitors can step into and explore. It’s an intimate, unexpected Serra encounter in public space.
Till next time, Isn’t it wild how our bodies are shaped by what surrounds us? The rhythms, the echoes, the smells, the textures, they all seep in and shift how we feel, think, and move. I’d love to hear what stayed with you, hit reply or drop me a comment.
Yours,
Inbal Z M
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