richard serra

Richard Serra's monumental steel sculptures are covered in rust. The 68-year-old American artist's work at the Gagosian in King's Cross, on show in London for the first time in 16 years, may all be new but they ooze oxidation. Orange specks that flake off, or flashes of silver through oil-slick blackness, the layered textures speak of another element.

And walking through them is like entering another element, chatter in the gallery muffled and reverberating to become a kind of whalesong. Two giant funnels called TTI London resemble beached hulls, their high-tide levels marked by mottled metal. Moving through the space makes each surface undulate, the top edges gently curving out of vision like an ushering maître d'.

There's not a straight line in the main gallery: beyond TTI, the towering black Open Ended leans in on itself menacingly. It has been likened to a maze but it's one without a heart; keep going, and you reach the edge again without ever feeling as though you've been at the centre.

It's a brilliant deception that Serra has choreographed as well as sculpted. In an anteroom, however, another piece is all straight edges. A huge block of steel leaks colour through accumulated layers and scored lines, as rich as any Turner landscape.