HAND CATCHING LEAD
CONTENT
hand catching lead from 1968 was Richard Serra's first video work. In the tradition of other artists of the late 1960s, such as Bruce Nauman or Yvonne Rainer, he pursued a self-imposed task. ...
The video works created at that time increasingly dissolved the rigid categorization of art into sculpture and painting and thus laid a foundation for today's transmediality. For around three and a half minutes, Serra's video work shows his hand trying to catch falling lead pieces before the video ends due to hand fatigue.

In the video work shown, this situation has been recreated in a computer animation and Richard Serra's hand catching lead was transformed from a work of physicality and materiality into an immaterial one, in which gravity, dirt on the hands and materiality are mere simulations.

The physical fatigue was repealed by a seamless, endless loop — the virtual hand catches the falling lead pieces in a repetitive loop that only stops when the power supply is interrupted.


computer generated animation, HD 4:3, 1', seamless loop
variable in size

exhibited at: Künstlerhaus Bregenz
YEAR 2022
FIELD visual art
TYPE artwork/
group exhibition
INITIATED BY self-initiated
NOTES shown at Künstlerhaus, Bregenz
©Daniel Leiter 2026, all rights reserved