Neal Baer Collection

Ser Serpas

Untitled

2019


Oil on unstretched canvas

26 3/8 x 26 3/8 in (67 x 67 cm)

Image courtesy of the artist and Karma International, Zurich

Ser Serpas (b. 1995, Los Angeles) works with “disgusting, ephemeral, mistreated” found objects, ranging from discarded furniture she finds on the street to photos she exchanges with lovers or finds on the internet. This work is based on such photos and comes from a series of oil paintings on unstretched canvas, here depicting an intimate view of masturbation.

Serpas applies a similar process to a variety of materials, shuffling objects, histories and information into precarious stand-ins for bodies reluctant to justify themselves as either forms or contents….’I make things the same way all the time. The things I find to make into other things I always find for free. I hope also because of this that the things I make from those things are free as well, free of themselves and of the other things. I know however that being valueless does not free you from being determined by your relationship to value, or from constant evaluation, but I like to think that I make sculptures that have an unclear relationship to their own value, or that in their restlessness can’t be trusted with it.’

Press release, Ser Serpas, “Against Attachment,” Goethe-Institut Cultural Residencies Ludlow 38, 25 April – 2 June 2019

Serpas’ engagement with the readymade dialogues with the work of Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Danny McDonald, and Vaginal Davis.

Provenance
Karma International

See also
Ser Serpas, “Monakhos,” LC Queisser, Tblisi, 16 July – 4 September 2022

Ser Serpas, “HED BANGER BOOGIE,” Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin, 29 April – 9 July 2022

Ser Serpas, “Made in LA 2020: A Version,” Hammer Museum, 17 April – 1 August 2021

Ser Serpas, “Against Attachment,” Ludlow 38, New York, 25 April – 2 June 2019

“Interviews: Ser Serpas,” Artforum, April 30, 2019

Alpesh Kantilal Patel, “Ser Serpas, Quinn Harrelson / Current Projects,” Artforum Critics’ Picks, February 8, 2018

Ser Serpas in the Pinault Collection