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Richard Serra: La Materia del Tiempo

Una de las funciones fundamentales del arte es la de hacer sensibles nuestras ideas. La inmaterialidad lingüística toma forma en la materia, ya sea en la etérica consistencia de una onda sonora o en la persistente realidad de una piedra. La escultura contemporánea ha transformado la tradición de experimentación de la forma en una experimentación directa del espacio. A su vez, la experiencia del espacio como luz ha dado paso a su vivencia como intuición básica para la conciencia de nuestra propia vida. Bien es cierto que los museos no son precisamente escenarios adecuados para la experiencia mística o estética, ya que las consideraciones sociales que implican cierran cualquier apertura de nuestra sensibilidad, y limitan la experiencia estética a una experiencia social generalizada en la que intervienen otros factores, pero Richard Serra ha conseguido minimizar tal ruido en el Guggenheim de Bilbao al presentar una obra que se en su colosal inmediatez y geométrica simplicidad envuelve al espectador en una interioridad no muy distinta a la que producen los jardines japoneses. Igual que en estos, el caminante se pierde en senderos curvilíneos que entretejen una geometría de luz que curva el espacio y a nuestra conciencia tras él, que entra en un tiempo de experiencia estética. Un espacio particularmente interesante es el que ha construido mediante torsiones elípticas que generan torsiones espirales, un esquema de los mismos movimientos gravitacionales que llevan a las galaxias elípticas a transformarse galaxias espirales bajo la mano alfarera de la fuerza de la gravedad. Estos principios generales de nuestra comprensión de la física-geometría son hechos sensibles, experimentables en nuestro desplazamiento corporal por un espacio museístico inerte. La obra de Serra  lleva la escultura hacia la música al devolver a la experiencia del espacio su forma más básica de proyección de la temporalidad.

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