Hand Catching Lead

In the 1960s, Richard Serra’s work, with its concern for questions of process and materiality, comes to extend into a new medium, film. Hand Catching Lead is a mise en abyme of the mechanics of cinema. One sees Serra’s hand trying to catch falling sheets of lead, metaphors for the frames of cine film drawn downward through the projector. As the action progresses, Serra’s hand, blackened by the lead, takes on the appearance of the silhouette of a dog attempting to catch things thrown for it. This mechanics of cinema refers back to their origins in shadow puppetry.