Ser Serpas was born in 1995 in Los Angeles, California and lives and works in New York. Primarily interested in death and legacy, her work is preoccupied with its own urgency in the face of fossilization. At present, she’s taken to sequestering the mundane. Serpas’ work takes the form of unstable assemblages of found objects in which painting, sculpture, drawing, and text bring together personal memories and traces of everyday life. She mashes bits of her life, both real and imagined, into anti-portraits. Some of which she deems fit to share within the context of exhibitions and performances. Precarious assemblages of disparate objects found in the street, which bear the mark of their uses, constitute her most well-known series to date. More recently, she has taken to using photos shot on her iPhone during college as source material for intimate views on unstretched canvas, wood panel, and paper. The unique way she reframes the body and tension in both her sculptural and text-based installations, which distort components of our shared architecture, carries into her atypically cropped portions of stolen archetypical intimacy.

In this conversation, we discuss:

* Urgency, fossilization, and building work from ruin rather than permanence

* Waste as imprint and the ethics of collecting discarded objects

* Horror and discomfort as formal strategies

* The aesthetics of survival

* Training AI to hallucinate bodies

* Control, labor, autonomy, and designing your life

Timestamps(02:22) “Monakhos” and the ghosts inside the frame(07:30) The Collector: absence, imprint, and waste(15:51) Confidence is knowing when to stop(17:46) Training AI to hallucinate bodies(30:38) Ruined objects, ruined selves(35:00) The aesthetics of survival(48:20) Horror, unreason, and the art of discomfort(55:00) Control, labor, and designing your life

Watch the conversationView the full episode on YouTube.

Follow Serhttps://maxwellgraham.biz/artists/ser.@ser_seraSer Serpas (b. 1995, Los Angeles, CA, USA, lives and works in Paris) Primarily interested in death and legacy, her work is preoccupied with its own urgency in the face of fossilization. At the present, she’s taken to sequestering the mundane while freely quoting art history in its full depth, paying little heed to the latter. Ser Serpa works take the from of unstable assemblages of found objects, in which painting, sculpture, drawing, and texts bring together personal memories and traces of everyday life. She mashes bits of her life, both real and imagined, into anti portraits, some of which she deems fit to share within the contexts of exhibitions and performances. Precarious assemblages of disparate objects found in the street, which bear the mark of their uses, constitute her most well known series to date. More recently she has taken to using photos shot on her iPhone during college as source material for intimate views on unstretched canvas, wood panel and paper. The unique way she reframes the body in tension, in both her sculptural and text based installations which distort components of our shared architecture, carries into her atypically cropped portions of stolen archetypal intimacy.

About The ForumThe Forum is NewCrits’ ongoing public talk series, presented in partnership with WSA/WSBS. Talks take place live every second Tuesday at WSA. Join us for our next conversation here.Explore NewCrits’ offerings, including crits, courses, and mentorship programs at www.newcrits.studio.

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