One of Richard Serra’s earliest memories as a child involves the launch of a monumental oil tanker near San Francisco. Reflecting back on the moment when the cables were cut, the fog horns blasted, and the massive steel ship departed, the artist stated: “All the raw material that I needed is contained in the reserve of that memory.” In Untitled, Serra uses thick layers of black paintstick (oil paint in stick form) to create a similarly forceful but ultimately indefinable and timeless abstract presence in the gallery. The work achieves a provocative tension between two visual formats: painting and sculpture. Like a painting, the piece is flat and supported by the wall. But gravity pulls the painted linen downward toward the floor so that it relates to the surrounding space in a manner more in keeping with sculpture.