Serge Serum – Carrion
Solo Exhibition
15.06.2021 - 25.06.2021
June 15-26 2021, SomoS Arthouse presents the solo exhibition Carrion featuring paintings, photographs, murals, and installations by Mexican-American artist Serge Serum (1993, Los Angeles). The work was produced during an artist residency at SomoS during spring/summer 2021.
Transforming the exhibition space into a site of existential contemplation, Serum’s work portrays a cycle of violence, death, decay, but also renewal.
To lovers of literature, the show’s title may recall the poem Carrion from Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal. The poem’s celebration of mortality and decomposition, gruesome sensuality and rebirth offers a fitting analogy to the presented body of work. In a further, more contemporary reference, the work alludes to body horror as found in video games and zombie movies. Carrion also features prominently in religious thought, where, next to semen, it is considered taboo. As a whole, “carrion” can signify a fascination with the things, subjects, and individuals that society rejects; its refusal to deal with mortality and suffering.
Art historically, Serum’s artistic and philosophical inquiry into the beauty of decay can be placed in the rich tradition of aesthetic morbidity as found in classical Vanitas painting; the existentialist and psychological painting of the 20th century; or in the provocative artworks of Art Vache, Art Brut, and Wilde Malerei.
Serum works intuitively, sometimes using personal or staged photographs as a reference, or drawing from memories of his upbringing in Los Angeles and Mexico. In his mixed-media works, the artist combines techniques such as oil painting, pastels, and spray painting. Furthermore, in an act of creative cannibalization, Serum scavenges through his previous paintings, breathing new life into the dead material by collaging them into new works. The heavily textured and often violently and obsessively reworked surfaces may reflect fragmented psychological states, emotional struggles, and mental scars.
The resulting artworks contain unsparing depictions of the human condition that nonetheless carry glimmers of light, for example, in delicate depictions of mourning flowers.
About Serge Serum
Serge Serum (born 1993 in Los Angeles) is a self-taught Mexican-American artist based between LA and New York. Active in painting and photography, Serum has held several solo exhibitions, including Lingered Memories at Last Projects, Los Angeles, 2019; Left Uncertain…, at James Black Gallery, Vancouver, 2018; Yours Truly, at The Ou Gallery, Duncan BC, 2018; To Take Comfort, at the Contemporary Gallery, Los Angeles, 2017; and Wayward Fantasies, at Funeral Diner, Portland, 2017. Next to his artist residency at SomoS in 2021, Serge participated in Residency Unlimited, in Brooklyn, NY (2019); James Black, Vancouver, Canada (2018); and at The Ou, Vancouver, Canada (2018).
More information about Serge Serum.
Carrion – Solo Exhibition by Serge Serum
Exhibition open June 15-26, 2021 – Tue-Sat from 2-7 pm
Artist Talk on June 18, 2021, 7 pm
Free entry
SomoS Art House – Kottbusser Damm 95, 1.0G, 10967, Berlin
U8 – Schönleinstraße
Visiting information:
Visitors are required to wear a face mask and keep a distance of at least 1,5 meters. Name and email address are collected and temporarily saved. Many thanks for your cooperation, see you soon!
