Andres Serrano

Art Brokerage: Andres Serrano American Artist: b. 1950. Andres Serrano (born August 15, 1950) is an American photographer and artist who has become famous through his photos of corpses and his use of feces and bodily fluids in his work, notably his controversial work "Piss Christ", a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass container of what was purported to be the artist's own urine. Serrano was born in New York City on August 15, 1950. He worked as an assistant art director at an advertising firm, before creating his first works in 1983. Serrano's work as a photographer tends toward relatively large prints of about 20 by 30 inches (51 by 76 cm), which are produced by conventional photographic techniques (as opposed to digital manipulation). He has shot a vast array of subject matter including portraits of Klansmen, morgue photos, and pictures of burn victims. He went into the New York City Subway with lights and photographic background paper to portray the bedraggled homeless, as well as producing some rather tender but sometimes decidedly kinky portraits of couples. One of these last shows what Adrian Searle of The Guardian described as "a young couple, she with a strap-on dildo, he with a mildly expectant expression. Many of Serrano's pictures involve bodily fluids in some way—depicting, for example, blood (sometimes menstrual blood), semen (for example, Blood and Semen II (1990) or human female milk. The most famous and notorious of Serrano's work plays on the relationship between beautiful imagery and vulgar materials, his subject matter often drawing from the potentially controversial and, perhaps, the willfully provocative. Serrano's work Blood and Semen III is used as the cover of heavy metal band Metallica's album Load, while "Piss and Blood" is used on ReLoad. Serrano also directed a video for industrial metal group Godflesh, "Crush My Soul". In 2013, Serrano made a work of art called Sign of the Times by collecting 200 signs from homeless people in New York City, usually paying $20 for each sign. He described the work as "a testimony to the homeless men and women who roam the streets in search of food and shelter. It's also a chronicle of the times we live in." Listings wanted.