Galerie Nathalie Obadia is pleased to present The Robots, Andres Serrano's fifth solo exhibition after Infamous (2019), Sacramentum, Sacred Shadow (2012) and Cuba (2014) in Brussels, and Torture (2016) in Paris.
For over thirty years, Andres Serrano has produced an oeuvre in line with his time's sensitivity or the Spirit of the Times, which can be literally translated as Zeitgeist - a term borrowed from German philosophy, designating the intellectual and cultural climate, the judgments and ways of thinking that characterize a specific point in time. Born in 1950 in New York, the artist grew up in an America that was trying to turn over a new leaf, after being deeply weakened by a society marked by excesses and abuse, where cruelty had reached a climax. However, those same limits persist today: Andres Serrano probes them by lifting the veil off of the troubling face of the world and, in particular, of the United States, at the dawn of the third millennium. While his series Infamous (2019) depicted a conservative and racist America - by revealing clues encapsulated insidiously inside consumer products -, The Robots paint a portrait of a world entering a new stage of connectivity: the launch of the Metaverse.
The Metaverse is a digital platform that prepares for the complete dematerialization of the world and even of our own bodies. This new destination proposes an entirely virtual universe in which the users, represented by avatars, can interact, move about, live untethered from our physical world. At a time when machines, technology and digital capabilities proliferate greatly in our contemporary societies, our bodies themselves have been subjected to major transformations: their powers of extension continue beyond their unique materiality. In his Robots series, where Andres Serrano presents objects from the 1950s and 1970s, he attempts to collect clues that announce the entirely digital evolution of our environment. In fact, «Before the Metaverse,» as the artist says, «there were robots.»
In December 2021, the artist began the series by purchasing robots, which he carefully selected for their histories and their physical particularities. These attributes elevate simple toys to the rank of collectible objects, desirable and sought out, sometimes reaching outrageous prices. The artist mainly photographed old Japanese robots, in which we can identify similarities with the new Meka NFTs¹. The non-fungible tokens, which have gained popularity over the last few years, are available to buy through online platforms and even through the major auction houses. This type of «new generation» acquisition changes the way we view objects and the world: it is now possible to collect what is immaterial. Thus, while remaining attached to the materiality of ancient objects - by photographing these vintage robots where the patina of time Pigment print, back-mounted on dibond, wooden frame is apparent - Andres Serrano also explores the iconography of the future, which is already at play today.
All the robots in the series bathe in a phantasmagorical universe: the loud colors in the background anchor the characters in another dimension. However, when we look attentively at the collection, certain details are intrinsically linked to real historical events. Most Japanese robots, armed or protecting themselves from missiles, position themselves like invincible, Postwar super-soldiers. They were made after the devastating bombardments by the American army in Japan, during World War II. The numerous astronaut-like robots, built at the dawn of the 1960s, allude to the entry into the space age - in particular with Sputnik, the first machine placed into Earth's orbit, in 1957. The photographed toys stand as symbols of powers or historical witnesses, archives of a sort. Through this series, Andres Serrano allows us to delve into the ambiguity of our relationships to robots.
While research in robotics has today reached dizzying heights, our attitude towards them has always been a mixture of fascination and fear: half-human, half creature, these automats' hybridity seduces as much as it troubles. The robots, as the artist says, also «link childhood and maturity, science fiction and science, existence and meta-existence. They are the future and the past, the intersection of real and unreal, rational and irrational, good and bad. They are us.» Violence and servility are condensed in these automats, which establish themselves as extensions of our own humanity. Through this series, Andres Serrano depicts the ambiguous landscape of our contemporary societies: he both reminds us and warns us of our complex rapport with robotics and with the potential abuses that they could entail.
¹ Inspired by the Japanese robots of the 1960s, the Mekas NFT are gigantic humanoid-shaped robotic armors housing a human who controls them and uses them to fight in the Metaverse.
