Reflections:A dialogue with Andres Serrano

Reflections:A dialogue with Andres Serrano

Andres Serrano is one of the most famous American contemporary artists of his generation. His courageous confrontation of society, provocative subject matter, and extraordinary talent in conceiving and creating images have won him praise from the art community, but condemnation from conservative Christian groups. His oeuvre often incorporates bodily substances such as blood, urine, breast milk, and feces. In his most recent work, he has dealt with the subject of torture, referencing its frequent use by the US military in Iraq and elsewhere.

Serrano came to prominence when he presented his 1987 series “Immersion”. One of the works featured a cheap plastic Crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist’s own urine. Serrano’s stated intention was to criticize the cheap commercialism surrounding the Christian faith, but instead he was denounced and even received death threats from conservative groups. This and many other issues related to his work, and his own position as an artist dealing with provocative subject matter, will be discussed in our dialogue with this renowned American artist.
________________________________________
Participants
Andres Serrano

Andres Serrano lives and works in Manhattan. In 2017, he was made a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in France. He has had solo exhibitions at the Petit Palais in Paris (France, 2017), the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels (Belgium, 2016), the Fotografiska Museum of Stockholm (Sweden, 2015), the Palais Fesch – Musée des Beaux-Arts in Ajaccio (Corsica, 2014), the Kulturen of Lund (Sweden, 2007), the Villa Croce Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Genoa (Italy, 2006), the Williams College Museum of Art (USA, 2006), and the Moscow House of Photography (Russia, 2005).

Andres Serrano’s work is present in many private and public collections such as the MoMA in New York (USA), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Zagreb (Croatia), the Institute of Contemporary Art in Amsterdam (The Netherlands), the Israel Museum of Jerusalem (Israel), the Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo of Mexico City (Mexico), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (USA), the Brooklyn Museum in New York (USA) and the New Museum of Contemporary Art of New York (USA), etc.

Jonas Stampe

Jonas Stampe is a Senior Curator and Senior Researcher at Red Brick Art Museum. He works in the art field as an art historian, art critic and curator. Jonas Stampe was born in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1965, he was a student of Hubert Damish in contemporary art theory and history at l’Ecole des Hautes Études de Science Sociale in Paris, and made his Ph.D. at the Department of Contemporary Art History at the University of Lund, Sweden. He currently lives and works in Beijing.

Read all

Participants:

Andres Serrano
Jonas Stampe