anonymous gallery is pleased to present Balance of Trade, Shelter Serra’s first solo exhibition in Mexico. Serra will introduce a new group of sculptures that reflect his interest in cultural subjectivity, and the relationships between common objects and global commodities.

Traditionally, certain aspects of politics, religion, media and social interaction have defined the balance between authority and ideology. Visual stimulation and the signification of symbolism as an experiential attribute is basis for Shelter Serra’s multifaceted artistic practice. Through the re-contextualization of common objects, a new representation and iconographic reading is revealed and distilled for aesthetic contemplation.

Selected and skillfully crafted, Shelter explores multiple modes of production; casting recognizable objects, using materials such as nickel, resin, ceramic, and gold. Through these diverse properties of materiality, Serra explores the potential of signification and the components that shape our cultural identity. Often these contradictory components of symbolism suggest and imply, a new relevancy and interpretation of what we hold familiar. In the ever-increasingly dynamic world of consumer related commerce, visual and social manipulation, Shelter Serra refreshingly uses the mundane, creating new vernacular and reciprocal inversion.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Shelter Serra was born in 1972 in Bolinas, California. He studied studio art at the University of California at Santa Cruz and received a Masters of Fine Arts in painting and printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design. Serra’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, at the Renwick Gallery in New York, Space 1026 in Philadelphia, CYSTEM Gallery in Tokyo and Five Energy Gallery in Sapporo, Japan, and Urbis Gallery in Manchester, England. Group exhibitions include “Bad for You” at the Shizaru Gallery in London (curated by Beth DeWoody, 2012), “Look Again” at the Marlborough Gallery in Chelsea, New York (curated by Casey Fremont and Karline Moeller, 2010), and “Shred” at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery in New York (curated by Carlo McCormick, 2010). In 2011, Serra participated in the Art Production Fund and The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas artist-in-residence program. Large commissions include sculpture projects for Helmut Lang and Converse. Serra currently lives and works in New York City.