This publication was created to accompany Richard Serra's pair of exhibitions in Qatar in 2014, at the QMA Gallery at Katara and the ALRIWAQ DOHA exhibition space, and his permanent installations 7 and East-West/West-East, both commissioned by the Qatar Museums Authority. Instead of retracing Serra's career chronologically, as is usually done in the artist's exhibition catalogues, this book is divided into eight thematic chapters that do not aim to cover all of his work. Rather, this organization allows for a closer look into the development of specific families of work and thereby a fresh understanding of the work as a whole. Each chapter is built around the individual works shown at the QMA Gallery at Katara and the ALRIWAQ DOHA exhibition space, as well as 7, installed in MIA Park in Doha in 2011, and East-West/West-East, installed in 2014 in a site chosen by the artist in the Brouq Nature Reserve near Zekreet.

Richard Serra was born in San Francisco in 1938. Since the 1960s he has exhibited extensively throughout the world. In addition, Serra has created a number of site-specific sculptures in public and private venues in both North America and Europe. Serra's books at Steidl include Sculpture 1985-1998 (1999), The Matter of Time (2005), Te Tuhirangi Contour (2005) and Notebooks (2011). In April, 2014 Richard Serra installed a major permanent landscape sculpture in the desert of the Brouq Nature Reserve in western Qatar. He lives in New York and Nova Scotia.