Andres Serrano: The Doom of Beauty

Born in 1950 in New York, Andres Serrano has been developing, over the past thirty years, a body of work that relates to the Spirit of the Times – translated from the German Zeitgeist, a philosophical term referring to the intellectual, moral and cultural context of a certain era. His work as an artist demands that we look – that we look straight in the eyes¹ – at the spirit of our times: its abuses, its disruptions and its violence, concealed in our contemporary societies. While, at first glance, Andres Serrano’s work bewilders the viewer with its power of representation, it must also be seen through the prism of the artist’s fascination with certain old masters. References to the history of art, both in terms of painting and sculpture, run through his entire oeuvre. By “updating” certain classical artworks, Andres Serrano brings them back to life: the framing is original, the colorimetry resolutely personal, and each composition is meticulously reworked by the contemporary artist. In his own words, the point is to prove that “what happens in the past does not always stay in the past.”