Shelter Serra is a multidisciplinary artist whose artworks probe the resonance of imagery and objects he has pulled from the wake of American visual and material culture to reexamine.
Considered collectively, Serra’s compelling sculptures, drawings, and paintings form a symbology and investigation into the shifting symbolic power of the images and objects that surround us. Serra’s sculptures of ubiquitous or iconic commercial products which he has cast in bronze or resin, copper or gold-plated, are presented by the artist in a new context as conspicuous copies. Serra’s paintings similarly announce their existence as reproductions. Halftone dots, hand copied typeface, mimicked printing glitches, the tones of a black and white photograph, or the vibrant colors of a thermograph, signal that the subject has been rendered, filtered through an image-making process employed for a particular end. By reproducing and re-contextualizing these images and objects, the artist interrogates the cultural paradigms which led to their creation and commodification. The utility, absurdity, or desirability of the source image or object is contended with and re-assessed via Serra’s handmade proxies. His recreations provoke a conceptual consideration of the assigned, symbolic status of the original – fashionable, wasteful, threatening, luxurious, lowbrow; they test the limits or longevity of the original’s aura. If the artist’s choice of subject matter is perceived as a commentary on the ‘stuff’ this country generates, it is the viewer who has imposed this subtext. In the form of re-presentations of already manufactured products or reproductions, Serra’s artworks have a symbolic function. They point back to an original, and to the culture that gave that original meaning.
Shelter Serra was born in Bolinas, California in 1972. He received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1994 and his Master in Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design in 1996. The artist has exhibited his work nationally and internationally at galleries including Kasmin Gallery; David Castillo Gallery; Marlborough Gallery; Halsey McKay; Kantor Gallery; and The National Exemplar. The artist currently works and lives in New York City.