The Matter of Time

Richard Serra's 'The Matter of Time' (1994–2005) is a permanent installation at the Guggenheim Bilbao comprising eight monumental weathering-steel sculptures arranged within Frank Gehry's 130-metre-long Fish Gallery. Each piece — a torqued ellipse, a double ellipse, a snake, a spiral — stands up to four metres tall, and visitors physically walk through the slowly tilting curves as space compresses and releases around them. Commissioned specifically to occupy the gallery, it is one of the most ambitious sculptural installations of the 21st century and a defining experience of the Bilbao museum, as well as a summit of Serra's career-long investigation of steel, time, and the viewer's body.

Exhibition Venue

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Bilbao, Spain