Serpentine unveils major new public sculpture by luminary Gerhard Richter

Serpentine presents a new large-scale sculpture by German artist Gerhard Richter (b. 1932, Dresden, Germany; lives and works in Cologne, Germany). Situated on the plinth at Serpentine South, in Kensington Gardens, STRIP-TOWER (2023) is on view from 25 April to 27 October 2024. It is the latest presentation in a long-standing series of remarkable public presentations in The Royal Parks since Serpentine's foundation in 1970.

STRIP-TOWER (2023) expands on the artist's continued exploration of painting, photography, digital reproduction and abstraction and self-scrutinising approach that have occupied his practice for over six decades.

Since it launched in 1970, Serpentine has had a long-standing commitment to bringing art out of the traditional gallery context and into the surrounding landscape, offering an opportunity for artists to engage with the immediate environment of Kensington Gardens.

Specific Serpentine commissions of public artworks have ranged from a permanent installation of a stone circle and benches by Ian Hamilton Finley for the 1996 exhibition Inside Out. In recent years, public art has emerged as a central strand of Serpentine’s programme. 

Major presentations include Anish Kapoor’s Turning the World Upside Down (2010), featuring four works, including his iconic Sky Mirrors, placed in locations across the park, Fischli/Weiss’s final sculpture Rock on Top of Another Rock (2013), Betrand Lavier’s Fountain (2014): and Lee Ufan’s Relatum – Stage (2018-19). In 2018, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s monumental London Mastaba was installed in the Serpentine Lake and marked their first major public artwork in the UK and the final outdoor artwork completed in Christo’s lifetime. Jakob Kudsk Steensen’s augmented reality project The Deep Listener (2019), Sofia Al Maria’s commission Taraxos (2021) and Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s Pollinator Pathmaker (2022 - ongoing) have brought a younger generation of artist’s commissions to the park.